TOPIC:

I would like to go through my wheels, But I cant seem to break the allen heads fre. is there some fricken trick to popping them from their home of 20+ years?

Should I have them tanked then try?

On the other hand, Maybe a local tire center will pop them free for me.
I dont want to tape them off again to repaint my wheels this time.

Post edited by: ran429, at: 2006/02/26 14:31

which allen heads are stuck:whistle:

I assume you are talking about the ones that hold the brake disks on the wheel?
After 20+ years I suspect there is a bit of corrosion involved, considering it's steel bolts and aluminum threads. You might try a hammer impact driver with a hex (allen head) bit in it, maybe even heat up the wheel near the bolts with a propane torch first.

all of mine have bolts ive never seen allen heads on rotors before,anyway get an allen head socket for for 1/2" drive and put that on a 1/2" impact if you have one otherwise try a breaker bar with a cheater pipe on it. goodluck,happy wrenching!

I had the same problem last week, I had to buy the 1/2" socket attachment, they are 5mm for the allen wrench. I found that if you use a soft mallot hammer on the top to hit them with the 1/2" socket in them, i works well and frees up some of the crap that has been sitting in them, but still may take some elbow grease to free that "1" that is the PITA...Goodluck!

Add another one to the "I had that same problem" club.

I don't know about on your bikes rotors, but the 21 year old bolts on my ZN rotors had factory applied orange colored (med?) Loctite on them.
I used one of those butane lighters that are used for lighting BBQs and fireplaces (a small butane torch is on my "gotta get it" list) to heat the rotor bolts up first.
After placing the short end of an "L" shaped allen wrench into the bolt head, I then stuck about a 4' section of 2" diameter thin-walled steel pipe over it for leverage. I turned clockwise about 1/16" to 1/8" to first loosen the bolts, then alternated 1/4 turn clockwise to 1/2 turn counter-clockwise until I could just use the allen wrench without the pipe as leverage.
It went pretty fast once the initial loosening was done. And not one of those bolts gave me any problems, broke, stripped or stretched.

Yup, same here. Tight-as-hell. The allen holes were starting to deform from the torque. I let it soak with liquid wrench over night and tapped lightly on the heads, then applied heat as mentioned above. They came out OK with no damage. I think everyone would agree that patience is the key to not breaking these babies!