How to Drill Through Broken Easy Out

Bought a used GS, Corbin seats. The cap head allen bolt that holds the backrest in the seat was stripped out and frozen in place when I got it.
I soaked it w/ penetrating oil, drilled it, put in an EZ out, and the EZ out snapped off flush with the bottom of the allen socket in the head.

4 brand new titanium drill bits have met their maker trying to re-drill the bolt. Is nothing harder than EZ-out? I've been drilling slow w/ oil on the bit. Nothing works.

There's no way to grasp the head. It's recessed in foam, and rounded off (BRILLIANT!).

All I can figure is find somebody w/ a stick welder, lay a nut on top of it, and use a thin electrode to weld it to the bolt at the inside of the nut hole.

It's only a 1/4-20 bolt, so that's a SMALL electrode.

I also am "friend with welder"-less.

Anybody got a miracle idea for me?
yeah, I know that feeling but when it happened to me I was at work so got paid the time to get it out
I used to use a really high speed windy (drill) with a grinding tip on it that is smaller than the hole. go in, grind it down untill the ezi-out is not gripped onto the hole, and then pull it out with a storng magnet or thin wire.

sounds difficult but by the sounds of it you have the seat of so can manipulate it to make it wasy to work.

these days I have a cheap dremel like tool, electric powered and cheap as chips, the Dremal was AUS$200 and the one I got was AU$80. just as good I reakon.

Hay Ewe
Dude, I live in Portland, and I'm leaving for Alaska tomorrow morning, but I've got a mig welder in my garage that I could help you out with.
(mig welders are wire feed, I recently welded a nail to broken bolt on a friends bike and that worked well...)

Anyways, what you should do is find someone with a mig welder.

If you can wait until the 31st I'll help you.

if it's only recessed in foam - couldn't you trim some away then hit it with vise grips and replace the missing foam with spray foam or something?
Better you than me pal! Those things can be quite the pain.
Use a small center punch to break the EZ out up, not only are they hard but they are brittle too and will bust up easily with a properly ground punch. You can also use a dental burr on a dremel tool to hollow them out, then break them up.

When you have the EZ Out busted and out of there, take a 3/16 drill bit and drill all the way through the frigging bolt, then follow up with a 1/4" bit until the head of the bolt comes off. Remember to use oil when drilling this stuff, but I'm sure you're familiar with proper technique.

If you can do this in a drill press, that would be my recommendation.

Anyway, once the head is drilled off the bolt and you have a 3/16 hole in it, use a punch or a nail set to collapse the wall of the drilled out bolt, then push it into the hole. Hopefully the tube is open so you can shake it outta there.
I use left hand drill bits with excelent results. They are hard to find sometimes and people might think your pulling their chain but they are very real and work well.
Hay ewe- It's hard to see where hte hell the bolt ends and the EZ out begins now. I think I've screwed it up beyond your technique. I also killed a couple Dremel bits on it already. I'm fast approaching the cost of another damn backrest even at Corbin prices.
BTW, the bolt is recessed in riveted on leather, some hard plasticky stuff, metal, AND foam... I wasn't clear enough before. It's like an inch into the back of the seat.

The small diameter and the funky angle also make it prime for busting off drillbits.

Greasemonkey- I tried center punching it to help the drill bits cut.... flattened out the point on my damn center punch. I'm almost wondering if the EZ out wasn't heat treated wrong- resulting in really goddamn hard and extra brittle metal... Anyhow, it's not going to break up. As mentioned, it's hard to see where the hell it even is.

2 dumbnotto - I don't see how a lefty bit that won't cut and goes dull is going to solve this. If I could find something to drill into the bit, I'd just stick my new #2 EZ-OUT in there and pull the bastard out. Problem is she won't drill.

Toolfan, I might just be hollering at you in a couple of weeks... w/ the right welder it might be a cinch. I'm trying to get this out so I can put the wife's backrest on my seat and take a trip one up where I figure I might like that backrest but that's not until mid August. I appreciate the offer. Have a safe trip.

Tomorrow I'm going to try getting the head drilled off it and see if I can't see better or maybe even grind the nub that's left into an approximation of a hex and get a socket on it...

I can't cut a groove in it without also "grooving" the leather around the hole.
From your description, I'm thinking patience and a small grinding stone in the Dremel is the way to go. It takes time, but it will work. Been there, done that. A decent EZ-out is really tough to drill.
all the best,

Mike
Head's all the way off the bolt. What's left is flush with the piece it's threaded into, but that's recessed in an oval hole in a piece of 1/8" thick steel.
I don't have anything in my arsenal that will cut into that damn EZ out and the surface of what's left is lumpy.

Just ruined a carbide burr on the Dremel. I ruined a little stone yesterday.

Anyone got a spare EDM rig?

I'm going to bed. What a fucking mess.
JRP Old guy Supporter

I've had good luck drilling out broken taps with a straight flute carbide drill. The taps are at least as hard as the EZ out. You can drill it completly out with a .250" drill bit and HeliCoil it.
Good luck
Home Depot or Harbor Freight has small stones. It's important to use light pressure. If too much pressure is used, the stone breaks or wears quickly intead of cutting. I learned that the hard way a long time ago.....
all the best, and good luck!

Mike
Well, let me know. I almost invited you over this morning, but I didn't start packing until I woke up...
I don't think a welder is going to be the best solution though - welding creates heat, and heat will be bad for th foam/seat cover/etc.

Lot's of good ideas here... for me, a picture might help because I'm having a little trouble understanding where this bolt is hand how it's broken...
but not cheap either.
my set at work has five drills and was $50+ bucks from Cornwall.
Snapon, Mac, Cornwall. all the good tool venders will have them.
I'd say ... carbide drill bit, lots of lubricant, low speed, high pressure.
Good luck.
vtwin Air cooled runnin' mon

Not much will put a dent into a good easy out, they are hardened. Hammering it with a punch only makes it sit in there tighter and will never allow it out. Trying to break it in situ won't work as there isn't anyway for it to expand so it will have somewhere to break out to. When I worked at the dealership, exhaust studs would break on the cars all the time, usually the last one on the rear cylinder. Probably due to heat and the turbo vibration. We've broken many ez outs. The key to not breaking them is to know when applying too much force and the broken stud/bolt won't budge, you will break the ez out. Best thing is to drill the center hole out as large as you can, to get the biggest ez out in there, as it will be stronger. I used the taper ones so you could back them out if the bolt won't move. Once broken, one of the things we used to do was to drill out around the ez out with COLBALT drill bits. This would relieve the pressure around it and then use a small chisel to break the ez out. Then heli-coil or install a nutsert and be done with it. If that doesn't work, the only thing to do is to bring it somewhere where they have a lazer cutter. We used a guy near San Francisco and he removed ones the regular machine shop could not.
good luck.
Thanks everyone.
Toolfan, now that the head's off I can see better, and man this thing is down in a hole. Welder won't save it.

I've learned by trial what somebody said- there is no way to bust up the EZ out since it can't expand.

I nibbled around it with small holes leaving it high and busted the top off.

Now I have to do that again. I figure I've got a sliver of EZ out left, but it just won't cut. I keep dulling bits, re-sharpening them, dulling punches, re-pointing them....

The left handed bits might be great prior to EZ out bust-off, but using one now would just screw the nub of EZ out into the old bolt harder. If I could get that out of the way I could just drill a new hole, even if oversized, and just tap the new hole.

I've been wailing on it so much it's hard to even tell where the bolt ends and the material around it begins.

I am Ahab. This bolt is a white whale....
Bake adventurer

Joined:

May 15, 2005

Oddometer:

10,752

I'm kinda radical on this kinda stuff..I add up what expending a lot of my time is worth, and the solution must be cost effective, else try a system that's quicker.
Some of this issue seem to be access. I'd look at it this way: if you can't fix this, the backrest can't be used and if that's the main reason for using this seat, then you choose the lesser of two evils. New seat? $400? maybe $500?
Ok that's the expensive fix.

Next step down. Ask Corbin what they charge to rebuild the back end of the seat. Removing the buggered bracket and putting in a new one.They'll probably tell you "buy a new seat". But maybe they do it for less.

Next step down..cut a patch of leather and foam out big enough to totally expose this problem, exposing the bracket that's welded to the seat pan. Easy to fix the broken stud then, just drill around the original hole the nut that's welded in there is attached to. Make a little patch plate with a new nut welded to it, and screw it in there. Be sure to get it centered.
Then the seat gets repaired at the local foam/leather guy's. Maybe less sanitary a fix but a good one should be able to match the materials.
Plus, it looks more adventuresome with a patched up Corbin on an adventure bike anyway. Tell 'um "that's where an arrow from a tribesman in Africa went after me". Dents in tanks work that way too, "oh, a mule in Mexico put that there."
I got it out!
I almost did similar to the "cut a hole" suggestion, through the bottom of the seat, but I didn't have to.

Eaglemike gets a prize. I had wasted some stones, but I tried again. Cone shaped grinding stone, Dremel at full tilt, light pressure. Lost a little of the tip of the cone as it became the shape of the divot, then it started to cut material.

After about 10 minutes I removed the stone to blow debris out and check progress for the 10th time, and there was the last 1/32" of that fucking EZ out in the bottom of the hole, loose.

Then it was fairly easy to just increase bit size until the whole bolt was gone. Not even a #4 EZ out would get this 1/4" bolt to turn.

I lost the threads because somewhere in the process of hammering on this, I got a tad off center... Oh well, the bolt's just there to lock the backrest in to prevent theft anyhow. It's not like the missus is gonna fall off.

Maybe when toolfan gets back he'd be kind enough to weld up the hole for me, then I can drill a new one and tap it for a bolt to retain the backrest and prevent theft.... But there's no way to retain it with a bolt when it's in the driver's seat, so I'm sort of at a loss for why they bothered w/ such a system on the passenger seat... :huh

Maybe because it's a perfect place for water to collect, freeze a cheap, stupid bolt, and cause you to buy a new overpriced seat...

Thank you all for the suggestions to keep my brain working on this and keep me from taking the nuclear option.
MK GS-
Can you post a pic or 2 of your situation here? Kinda hard, for example, to suggest to chusk it in a mill, or even to use a carbide burr to cut a slot in both sides of the head and use a screwdriver to pry it enough apart so the EZ Out comes out and then you can use the screwdriver to remove the bolt. A good tool for this can be made from an old tire-iron. If you can reach it, for example another way is to chuck a carbide endmill with a 1/4" shank into a router and use that to re-shape the head.

Anyway, a pic might be helpful to figure out a plan of attack on the little SOB.
I would post a picture if I was not a mighty slayer of stuck bolts.
See above.

(right, only took me 8 hours 10 drill bits and 50 beers....)
Guess I was writing when you were posting, congrats on the success!
Next time you are visiting your dentist, ask him to save his worn dental burrs for you. Even worn, those things can really cut through some hard stuff.