If you want to buy a centre punch try an engineering supply shop,you need a very good quality one to smash out broken taps in holes, I know from the number of times i have had to do it at work over the years.
Wear safety glasses when smashing the tap as you definitely do not want a piece of it in your eye!
Hi,
A good machine shop should have a spark erroder.
This actually disintegrates broken taps and the like without damaging the surrounding metal.
Might be worth ringing round.
DaveO
Thanks for all the suggestions folks. I went to take the downpipes off earlier, hoping I wouldn't have to take the rad off (which I didn't), and thinking I'd have one last go at getting the tap out with what I had before taking it into an engineer. Having the offending hole (*cough*) facing up and easily accessible (oo er) made it a lot easier. I managed to drill and break up the tap, and finally got the right sized hole redrilled. Then I threaded it (very carefully) with another tap, and it's now fixed!
Lesson learned? Be very careful using cheap taps. It's a set I got from B&Q for very little, and I think in future I'll be getting better quality taps from a specialist when I need to thread holes. Not worth the hassle using cheapo acme tools.
glad that you are all sorted, you just need to clean, lube and refit.
Any photos!!!
Thanks. I'm in the middle of a code rewrite at the moment, so there's nothing else demonstratable yet. In fact, I started the rewrite shortly before I went to sort out the exup then all that went pete tong and so the arduino project has stalled. I've a few days off next week though, so hoping more progress will be made.
look forward to the pictures :-)
"acme tools" bought a few of them in my time and learnt the hard way.......always buy quality now.well worth the extra
One, is never going to be enough.....