Snapped fastener woes

[AZdougness]

What you are looking at is the right rear grab rail 8mm bolt that holds the fender to the rail. The bolt snapped with about 1/4 inch of the thread still pushing through the fender's hole. It is preventing me from sliding it out of the holder on the inside and working on it more safely. The top of the bolt has an extractor head broken off into it during the attempt to remove it.




Looking for advice on what my next path should be on repairing this. Current ideas are:

• Try to saw or dremel off the thread sticking up above the fender and slide out the anchor on the backside
• Remove the anchor's metal holder on the inside of the fender and remove, replace with a standard bolt & nut fastener
• Take to a machine shop, give them $30, ask not to scratch or break anything
• Try to drill out the extractor, and then find a carbon steel extractor so not to repeat
• Drink a couple beers and hope it falls out by itself

For now, the last one wins. Ideas, thoughts, suggestions are welcome!

Cheers
Doug

[Chrisj CMA]

links dont open......put them on photobucket and then its a cut and paste

[John Schmidt]

I go with #2, remove the nut cage from the inside. For more room, you might want to raise the the bike slightly with a jack to take pressure off the shocks, then unfasten the shocks on both sides. This will allow you to raise the bike more while the wheel and swingarm stays down, thereby giving you more room to work.

[da prez]

  F Y I , if a bolt breaks off during removal or installation , an extractor will not likely remove it. The thread is bound up . Most extractors are weaker than the bolt. Also, most extractors are tapered and expand the bolt making it tighter in the hole .
  There are straight spline extractors , but these are pounded in and help to tighten the grip. I am not saying extractors don't work. I pride myself on the number of damaged bolts and sparkplugs I have removed thru the years. If an extractor won't start moving the bolt within a reasonable pressure , stop and start over by drilling thru and working up to the tapdrill size and then tap the threads out. The drill hole for the extractor should be centered as close as possible. Time and patience will be rewarded with a tall cool adult beverage!
                                                                da prez

[Madmike]

if that is a tapered easy out you can sometimes get the broken piece out by turning it in a right hand direction (clockwise) and it may loosen up and you can pull it out.  Also if you drilled right through the bolt you may be able to break some of the easy out of and then drive the rest of it through with a pin punch and then break it off on the bottom or bury it enough to get the nut out of the cage.  Somewhat primitive but potentially sucessful.

[sugerbear]

go here http://lifeisaroad.com/stories/2005/08/24/valkyrieRearFenderNutCageMod.html

follow instructions.
a carriage bolt from the inside works great.

[AZdougness]

Thanks everyone for the replies and tips!

Update:

I ended up using a dremel to make a cut on the inside housing and pried it apart until the square nut came out. After looking at the link that SugarBear posted I intend to take both housings off in favor of using carriage bolts.

I may also get a couple acorn nuts to see how they look if there is room to slide in the carriage bolt from the tire side and use the acorn as the finish on the grab rail side... This will also require the 10mm front rail bolt's co-operation. It seems like it might be a better finish then a boring hex head or cap. I like shiny things.


worthless without pictures as always, here is the damage:

[sugerbear]

 

cut that holder all the way off and smooth out the sharp edges.

you'll probably need spacers also. chrome looks good. make sure there's room in the acorn nut to not push the bolt through the nut(don't ask) the pic shows the short acorn nut, not much room...

now you'll be ready to go darkside, IF you ever want to.