In this video I'm going to drill out a hard
steel wheel bolt for a friend the
locking wheel bolts on this vehicle have
being damaged and could not be removed
using the dedicated anti-theft wheel
bolt remover the garage has managed to
remove three locking wheel bolts but
could not remove this one the tyre is
getting very close to being dangerous
and so this wheel has to come off in
order to change to tyre, even if it
means cutting the alloy wheel off with
the grinder I'd just like to point out
that drilling the wheel bolt
should be the last resort normally with
something like this I will try and weld
a steel pipe to the end of the wheel
bolts but I only had galvanized pipe
which is not good to weld I then tried
to tap the bolt out using the cold
chisel and Hammer but that proved
impossible I have done a video showing
several techniques on how to remove
rounded bolts etc I will put a link to
that in the description if you're going
to try welding some thing to the wheel bolt
it is critical to disconnect the
negative lead on the car's battery
terminal or you can fry the electrics
when you start welding it is also
important to loosen the other bolts on
the wheel slightly before attempting to
remove the difficult one
to drill out a hard wheel bolt like this
you are going to need some specialist
equipment mainly a magnetic base drill
and a special drill bit for hardened
steel in this video I'm using an
evolution mag base drill this makes
really light work of drilling metal you
can see that in order to use a drill
I have clamped the mild steel plate to
the wheel then the mag base drill is held
onto the plate using the electromagnet
on the base of the mag base drill by
using this drill bit you can ensure that
you get the drill bit right in the
center of the bolt
I've borrowed this mag base from a friend
but you can often hire them quite cheaply
to do the drilling I'm going to use these
which ARTU drill bits from the profi-
line these are multi-purpose drill bits
so you have what looks like a regular
drill bit and at the end there it looks
like a masonry bit that has a very
tough piece of tungsten carbide which is
welded into the end of that and that is very
very tough
these drill bits can actually be used to
drill through a steel bearing race which
is one of the toughest Steel's that you
can actually get you do have to use
these drill bits on a very high speed
for that reason you need to use them in
either a mag base drill or a pillar
drill when you are drilling Steel's it's
not recommended to use these on mild
steel because that is too soft obviously
you can drill mild steel with a regular
HSS drill bit and as you can see that
one really needs re-grinding at the end
there another thing you could use is a
solid carbide bit but solid carbide bits
like that are very expensive and they
are very brittle any sideways movement
at all on that bit will cause it to
break so really solid carbide bits like
that should really only be used in
machine shops or in places where you can
ensure that a drill but it's not going
to wander at all because that will break
it the first drill bit is roughly a 5
millimeter diameter bit you have no
chance of drilling it hard wheel nut
using a standard HSS or cobalt bill bit
as you will blunt the drill as soon as
you touch the bolt
you'll notice that I'm not using any
cutting fluid or coolant this is because
these drill bits do not require any
these bits actually work better if the
metal gets hot you can see that the
drilled out metal on the floor is burnt
which is exactly what you want with
these drill bits the heat generated
during the drilling process can also
help to loosen the damaged bolt
once I have drilled down the bolt using
this bit I swap it over to the 10
millimeter diameter bit and continue
drilling I am ensuring that I do not go
all the way through the wheel bolt as
I do not want to drill anything
other than the bolt I have removed one of
the other wheel bolts and used masking
tape to gauge the correct drilling depth
once the main diameter of the bolt is
drilled out I then try to knock the bolt
loose again using the cold chisel and a
hammer you can see that this time the
bolt has loosened and can be removed by
chasing the bolt out with the hammer and
chisel if it was not possible to chase
this out with a hammer and chisel
another option would have been to use a
screw extractor or drill the
wheel bolt out completely and then
clean the hole using a tap this is the
drilled wheel bolt as you can see the
hole is straight down the center of the
bolt when replacing the wheel bolt it's a
real good idea to add some anti-seize
compound to the bolts as this will
hopefully prevent this from happening
again I hope you have found this video
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