Rear disc bolts

[tommyardin]

Had a mare of a time last night trying to get my rear disc bolts off  :'( .  I thought they'd be as easy as the fronts, all they seemed to take was a bit of heat and an impact driver and they were off in jig time.  The rears in comparison are ridiculous!  I've first tried using heat and an impact driver and after much whacking of the driver managed to get a small bit of movement on one of them.  Then used a small breaker bar and tried to tease it round and the fucker snapped.  That shouldn't be too much of an issue as I've got access to a drill press and should be able to drill it out.  I started on the others and with a bit of heat managed to get one of them to move a bit but the last thing I want is snap it off as well, it wasn't exactly moving freely.


Anyone got any tips for removing these buggers[size=1em], at the moment my only plan is to use heat and go slowly? [/size][size=1em]I've given them a soak overnight in plusgas to see if that helps but i think its the blue loctite that must be causing the issues here so don't think it will help much.  [/size][size=1em]Stuart[/size]

Hi I had the same problem when replacing my rear disc.
Some of the problem is that the disc retaining bolts/allen screws protrude through the hub of the wheel into the hollow section of the wheel centre where water and dirt can get, but you can not easily get to to clean that area, the end of the bolts that protrude into that hollow section start to rust, and then a form of electrolysis sets up between the alloy wheel centre and the rusted steel bolts which grips the bolt tight in the alloy and then when you manage to get the bolt to eventually move you are screwing a gnarled up rusted steel bolt through the alloy hub ripping out material as it comes, its not the bolt that suffers but the tapped thread in the alloy.

It took me a couple of hours to get mine out and if my understanding of the problem is right, mine came out reasonably easy compared with some.
I got into my hub with a flexi drive from a dremel with a fine wire brush and cleaned as much of the threads as poss before turning the bolts a quarter of a turn and doing it again and so on untill the bolts had rotated a couple of full turns, sprayed liberally with plus gas release fluid and just kept rocking the bolts back and forth until they eventually came out.
I ran a tapered tap down each bolt hole to ensure the threads were clean using plenty of lube and replaced the bolts with high grade stainless steel bolts, applying plenty HMP grease to the bolts when tightening them up so should they ever need to come out again it should not be a problem.
That was a couple of years ago now I have checked the bolts on 3 or 4 ocassions just to check their tightness because of the HMP grease applied but they have always tight.

Good luck with that but do go gently or you may end up foccing the back wheel by ripping out alloy from the hub and enlarging the holes.
The S/S bolts that I replaced the originals with were a little shorter so they only came flush with the inside of the wheel centre/hub leaving nothing protruding through. 

If you use Stainless Steel bolts do check that they do not foul the rear caliper as the wheel rotates, mine miss the caliper by a 1 mm or two, but it's enough , as I say that was a couple of years ago now and no issues with it