exhaust studs and oil cooler removal

[bludclot]

in a masterpiece of no forward planning whatsoever instead of re-fitting my newly re-assembled forks i suddenly took a whole number of bits off the front of the bike.





one exhaust stud came out with the nut but the other 7 remain in place. i've double nutted another as seen in the picture but it doesn't want to move - any advice on how to remove the remaining studs? the far right (as pictured) stud must not snap as it's behind the frame bar and can't be drilled out!


and then there's the round thing at the bottom with a large nut on the front (i've seen it referred to on here as the oil cooler but it's not like a little radiator type oil cooler that i know) anyway is this a case of bending the tab back and unscrewing? and then will loads of bits fall out leaving me standing there staring at it in disbelief?


any help appreciated.

[Screwdriver]

The only way those studs are coming out is with heat. Lots of it. Think: welder.


You could play a flame over the alloy, use a bit of 3in1 oil, left to soak overnight, double nut, dahdedah but if you want them out and they don't want to come out, hit them with a stick welder or TiG first.


If the thread strips on you or a stud snaps, weld a nut on. Once the stud is red hot, get a spanner on there and it will come out. Need to spanner it while it's still cherry red if its being awkward...


The oil cooler is water cooled. If you want to take it off just to clean it - don't. If there isn't anything wrong with it, roughly mask it off with paper and spray it silver or black if you have to but personally I wouldn't recommend taking it off just to clean it. Have you got a decent torque wrench?


Screwd.

[sirgalahad3]

I took my oil cooler off to repaint etc. Easy. Just bend tab washer back and undo big nut. Nut on mine wasn't over right,came off easy. No hidden springs etc come flying out!
Re studs: heat and expand alloy not the stud as heating just the stud on its own will make it tighter...

[Screwdriver]

How do you propose to heat the cylinder head casting? Half an hour with a heat gun on each stud? I have done this a zillion times: ten seconds per stud. I usually zap it with the TiG. Yes the stud expands but when it does, it is no longer stuck...


I think it best to discourage taking a machine apart simply to clean it especially if (no offence buddy) the person doesn't even know what the item is. [size=78%]This is mine I pulled during a gearbox refurb:[/size]





Obviously I gave it a good clean but it gets dirty almost immediately. Don't see the point really. You can get decent results with Gunk and a can of barbecue black.


S.

[solorider]

I used a blow torch with a fine flame and a stud extractor, and I got all mine out without breaking one, and some of mine were a little thinner than they should have been.


I bought my studs from a Vauxhall dealer, half the price and virtually the same length.

[Screwdriver]

Ok that's rough. But I'll see your Fazer and raise you a 95 fireBlade.














These were stainless fittings and they really didn't want to come out!

[Falcon 269]

Schools should drop sex education classes and teach lads to weld instead.

It's a skill you can use for a lifetime.

Wish I had it.

[sirgalahad3]

Heat stud bosses with a fine flame?
Re cleaning I think its a good thing,hats off to bludclot for trying to keen his bike nice,unlike some of the rusty lumps in the pics above..
Anyway I bow to your obvious knowledge Mr screwdriver, good luck bludclot

[Screwdriver]

Just for the record, I buy "rusty lumps" and restore them. It is a good idea to keep a machine clean and this is a byproduct of a regular maintenance schedule. I would draw the line at dismantling a critical component which, in the OP looks pretty damned clean already!


Secondly, bludclot is suffering from Pringles syndrome: once you pop, you can't stop. We've all done it, you start with one small item, then just keep nibbling away at a machine until before you know it, you're looking at a bare frame...


S.

[b1k3rdude]

Well considering the engine looks very clean its possible the studs aren't that bad.

The option suggested by Screwdriver (the cheapest and that I have also done) Buy some qaulity penetrating fluid (- Fuchs) and spray it in the stud/engine junction over night.

• Then get two nuts on the stud and tighten them against each other.
• Then pop a ring spanner on the back nut and rock the studs back and forth till it starts to move.
• If its still stupid tight apply more penetrating fluid and keep rocking back and forth
• And its its still tight get a butain blow-torch and heat the stud (put some thick gloves on as the spanner will get hot) and work the stud till its comes out.

The trick is to be gentle and patient.

Regarding the oil cooler, as long as the corrosion isn't to deap first take a wire brush to it and clean all the corrosion off. And someone will confirm this for me, but I believe the cooler is made of aluminium alloy, so you can't use Hammerite on it. Instead you will need to use an aluminium/alloy etch primer and then some normal silver or black cellulose paint.

[Captain Haddock]

If you are going to heat the stud let it cool before trying to take it out, the ali will then be warm and the expansion of the stud will have squashed some of the corrosion holding it in and shrank back again.
I'd always heat the ali for removal.
One trick i've done before is drilling through a stud and welding the hole back up, allow to cool and the weld pulls the stud in on itself, weld a nut on the end and out it comes.

[Screwdriver]

The FireBlade above was a complete mare and some of the studs were stainless. They would not budge unless you turned them while they were still cherry red...

[VNA - BMW Wank]

So how does this work?

You weld the nut on, perhaps a little more weld than is required to get to red hot?
The studs should be hard being exhaust studs I guess.
So despite having expanded in size, which you would think would make em stick harder.....

Well is it a case that you just soften em a little bit, Just soft enougth for em to slip, so with a bit of pressure on the end whilst red hot they turn nice and easy.

I mean if you could heat em enougth they would pour out after all. (well yeah bits of engine might melt too)

I had thought of doing mine, but ooooooo - what if I foc it up.  But then one day if I don't.

[Screwdriver]

So how does this work?

[/size]
[/size]Well, what a lot of people seem to ignore is that if you heat up the male thread, you are also heating up the female alloy because it is in such close proximity. Also the coefficient of expansion for aluminium is higher, up to twice that of steel. Ordinarily it is a devil of a job heating alloy which is a notorious heat sink so it is much easier to heat the steel bolt. Also if you go to all that trouble to heat up the alloy, good luck trying not to also heat the bolt.
[/size]
[/size]Yes you can fiddle around with cooling, chilling and even dousing with water but the plain fact of the matter is, if you heat the bolt cherry red, it will come out and you don't need to spend more than a few seconds on it either.
[/size]
[/size]
[/size]S.

[bludclot]

Schools should drop sex education classes and teach lads to weld instead.

couldn't agree more. although some girls might like welding skills too! and i would have liked to learn plumbing, electrics, brick laying, dress making... in fact making anything and everything, all the skills that i've learned since leaving school i could have learned when i was a child.

[/size]

If there isn't anything wrong with it, roughly mask it off with paper and spray it silver or black if you have to but personally I wouldn't recommend taking it off just to clean it. Have you got a decent torque wrench?

my standards are significantly higher than that.... yes i have two decent torque wrenches, one for high values and the other for low.




anyways: i read all the advice here and used plusgas four times in 48 hours and then heat on each stud.... 7 studs come out, 1 sheared. as i don't have welding equipment or experience the bike will go to my friendly mechanic for stud extraction. he said exactly what screwdriver says - that by the time a nut has been welding on the stud is so hot that it will come out with ease.


despite the picture posted above the appearance the front of the engine isn't that great. i did give it a once over when i refreshed the bike 3 1/2 years ago (those with good memories might recall) but at that time i concentrated on the rear - modifying and painting the swing arm etc. as i have finally agreed to sell my r6 at the end of this month to my mate that's been pestering me for it since he rode it a couple of years ago and the s1000rr shock came up i figured that now was time to break the fazer down before it becomes my only bike.


painting of removed bits has started. here the oil cooler has been cleaned ready for etching (the valve cover is for my work van, i am preparing a few under bonnet bits for that too):





and the front subframe has been cleaned up to remove the surface rust and primed ready for a tiny skim of filler. the coolant arm thing has been cleaned and etched, it's ready for silver:





a set of stainless studs and nuts has arrived, so when it all goes back together it should look pretty smart.

[VNA - BMW Wank]

Cheers Screwdriver. 

Just a thought.  Are cheepie No-gas MIG welders any good?  Such as http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/product/details/010110125   Would that be any good?

Not done any welding since I was an apprentice over 25 years ago.
Oh apart from welding the front sprocket onto my old Fazer600 a few years back.

[AllyBally]

 Gas less mig welders are fine, they are basically  the same as a normal mig but you need to buy gas less fluxed wire, I keep saying I'd treat myself to a welder for home,but there's always something else to buy.
  I would buy a normal welder, then if I wanted to I could use normal wire or fluxed (gas / no gas).
Generally, if I need to weld anything I take it into work and do it as I have access to a heavy duty mig,arc,plasma cutter and good old fashioned gas,great for silver solder and brazing etc and of course the trusty gas axe.
   I would say buy the best you can afford though, I have used some cheap ones in the past and they weren't very good,less control of the feed rate as there tended to be less settings so was sometimes big steps between them, feeding too slow so click it up and then was too fast for a decent weld

[bludclot]

managed to find some time for this yesterday.... knelt in front of the bike i painstakingly sanded back every surface with 400 grit wet until everything was smooth. this took well over an hour. i then cleaned everything thoroughly with panel wipe and kitchen roll, finishing with cotton wool buds soaked in panel wipe to reach in everywhere that my fingers were too fat to fit! it then took another hour or so mask everything before applying primer:





once dry i lightly flatted this with 800 grit, let that dry and panel wiped again before silvering:





so far so good. there's still a couple of issues, before painting the engine front i rubbed down a few small frame marks and scratches and blew them in but was a little heavy handed with the lacquer so there's three runs to be flatted down and re-visited. meanwhile all the other parts that were stripped off have been completed so apart from the sheared stud it's pretty much ready for re-assembly.

[Dave48]

Looking forward to seeing the end result of all this work!
its not just our Fazers prone to this full-frontal corrosion attack. Looking at some new bikes in dealer the other day was struck by how many have virtually non existent front mudguard & convoluted pipework. Guess there will be a few owners of MT09s etc having similar probs a few years down the line.
Fitted a fender extender to my baby having suffered similar probs with prev FZS 600-extensive corrosion to studs, rad bolts, engine mount bolts.
Goo luck getting the broken stud out!

[bludclot]

it's done.


here's the ais, oil cooler and coolant pipes re-fitted along with a new oil filter and sub-frame, the sheared stud can be seen to the left:





my friendly mechanic came and collected it at this point and welded a nut to the end of the sheared stud, it came out third attempt apparently, he said that it was well in there! there were no welding marks on the silver of the engine but the frame spar was marked and had to be revisited (sanded, masked, primed, sanded again, coloured and lacquered).


he was dubious about stainless studs going back in, he prefers mild steel when threaded into an aluminium casting, but my logic is that these stainless studs are most unlikely to come back out during my ownership. I copper slipped the washers and nuts, i appreciate that it will burn off but better than nothing with luck.


here's the down pipes fitted:





the engine front looks brand new now, although the painted finish to the cooler and pipe are not factory it's better than manky!


the rebuilt forks and bmw shock have improved the ride considerably, the shock i have a couple of issues with, that's for another thread though.

[Dave48]

Looking good, Bludclot!-soon be enjoying the results of your efforts!

[sirgalahad3]

Result. Worth doing I would say.