• Hi guys, gotten into a slight pickle here. Bought a carbon frame off eBay from a seller assuring me that the port screws on the cable routing housing were merely 'rusty'. Well after cleaning them up with some WD40, I've realised they're not only rust as hell, they're also rounded. Completely. I managed to get 1/4 off, and interestingly, it screws into a steel casing/housing - this leads me to think that drilling them out might be an option? But you need a 2mm hex to get them out, which makes me worried that there won't be left handed drill piece small enough to fit. Anyone had this problem happen to them? If so, what did you do? Any shops in London that could drill this out?

  • It doesn’t look too bad to be honest, it’s not that badly rounded. I would focus on breaking the bond before trying to get it out.

    Firstly get a screwdriver/bolt/something metal on the head and give it a sharp tap/loads of taps with a small hammer (not so hard that you do any damage to anything). That should shock the bolt and help break any corrosion bond in the thread. Then get some penetrating fluid down to the thread, plusgas is really good. Leave that to soak in for a bit.

    That should help free it off.

    The bolt head aspect, it looks corroded so much that the allen key isn’t going in the hole fully. You can usually clean it out with the rounded end of an Allen key but you don’t usually get that on a 2mm key. So try scratching out as much of the corrosion as much as possible with a pin or anything you can get in there. You should find you can get the key in much further and maybe able to undo the bolt by now.

    If it’s still not coming out and the head is properly rounded you can fill the hole with lapping paste and that will give you a bit more of a go. Failing that you could try epoxying a nut on there to try and undo it.

    Or get a soldering iron on it to get some heat in there. I wouldn’t recommend that though only if you’re desperate.

    What do you need to get this off for though?

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