Bolt stuck

[Christopher]

Hello all,

I stripped a bold on my car and now can’t get it off. It’s a torque head not a hex, and the sides are rounded, so there’s no chance of getting vice grips or a wrench on there. Does anyone have some suggestions?

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Topic

[Richard Kirshy]

One suggestion:
Might try hammering in the next size up hex wrench into the striped torx head and see if it will bite in.
Another suggestion:
Drill the head of the bolt off, remove what it attaches, then weld a nut to the remaining shaft

[Its me]

Drill baby Drill!

Good luck

-Karl

[David]

There are a variety of bold removal methods – first, though – is the bolt stuck because it’s just torqued in there well, or are the threads rusted into place? if the latter (or the former, for that matter) penetrating oil is your friend – you want to loosen up the threads. If you can’t hammer a hex head or larger torx bit into there, then the next thing I would try is a bolt remover – there is one style that is made for removing nuts/bolts that fits over the bolt head and bites into it – there are a lot of different versions of that out there – if that doesn’t work, then grind flats onto opposing sides of the bolt head so that you can use a wrench or vice grips on it. If that fails, then more traditional easy-outs are an option – those work the same way, but you drill a hole into the bolt (getting it centered is really important) then they go into the hole and grab into the bolt, allowing you to remove it.

Attachments:

• nutremover.jpg

[Shaun Flichel]

The post above me won’t work on torx bits, but maybe a air chisel with appropriate bit to dig in and turn it?

[Steve C]

This happened on a bolt on my rear diff flange when I was replacing my driveshaft. I ended up using my Dremel multi-max tool and cut the head off the bolt. The shaft was still seized in there pretty good and wouldn’t budge at all, so I had to take a MAPP torch to it and then got it off with some vice grips in a few minutes.

[Author]

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