Model Forum / General / Models / May 2008

Got a call out yesterday to a mate with a stuck locking wheel nut stopping
him changing a flat tyre. Looks like the gorillas at the tyre fitting place
he'd last been to had torqued everything up to several hundred foot lbs. The
first wheel nut key had just snapped in half trying to get it out and the
£25 replacement from Vauxhall was having no more luck. The AA had been
round, tried every tool in the van and failed miserably and then in
desperation they'd hammered a socket onto it without stopping to think that
would only spin because the bolt had a rotating collar on it to prevent
pikey car wheel thieves doing just that. So we now had a stuck bolt plus a
socket stuck on it filling the hole in the wheel and preventing any other
tool getting anywhere near the job. Nothing would persuade the socket to
come back off. I even tried welding a hook to it and levering that with a
6ft crowbar but it eventually just snapped the hook off.

To add to the woes the bolt was hardened steel. I managed to drill a pilot
hole through it with my only carbide drill, a 5mm one, but trying to open
that up with bigger HSS bits was getting nowhere. Carbide porting burs were
just being blunted without making much progress and after scrapping a £30
one I gave up on that too. I tried making more pilot holes around the
original one with the carbide drill but the odd shaped end to the bolt where
the key fits meant I was trying to drill into an interrupted shape rather
than solid metal and in the end I snapped a flute off the end of the drill.
Finally I managed to weld into a hole about 1 inch deep through the inside
of the nut to tack it to the rotating collar with my MIG and got the socket
and collar off. Next step was to try and weld a nut to the remains of the
bolt but my little MIG didn't have the grunt to really stick the two
together. In the end I hammered another socket onto what was left and it
came out :) Only took 5 hours.

So I'm left with a buggered carbide drill bit which used to come in really
handy for pilot holes in tough jobs. It's always much easier opening up a
starter hole than trying to drill from scratch with HSS in nasty materials.
A new one is only about a tenner but I'm hoping to get it reground. However
it would need shortening by about 5mm due to the missing flute on one side.
I reckon I can clean it up somewhere nearer on my diamond wheel but I'm crap
at hand sharpening drills and they always pull to one side after I'm done
with them.

So does anyone have a diamond wheel drill sharpener who could finish it off
for me or know of a place who would do it without it costing as much as a
new bit?

Second question. I was really struggling to weld things as big as a socket
or a 19mm nut to a big bolt with my little MIG. Everything was glowing
yellow hot inside the job but not actually sticking together. Maybe chrome
plated sockets and zinc coated nuts are not ideal things to weld together
but there was little I could do about that. In the workshop it seems to cope
with smaller stuff like welding a 13mm nut to a stuck 8mm stud which what I
mainly use it for.

I think I either need a bigger MIG or a stick welder for stuff as big as
wheel bolts or should I still have been able to do it if the materials had
been nicer to weld to? It didn't need any fancy welding - just enough
adhesion to stick the two things together well enough to get the bolt out
with a socket bar. Comments/suggestions?