Oh whoops I damaged the Aerotop

*title edited. Easy on the language fella!* {Sorry }

got home today and decided to go for a drive with the roof off...

undid three of the four bolts but the fourth one (nr side front) wasn't budging...

I moved to the passenger seat and gave it a bit of elbow grease and the end of my tool snapped off in the hole!! (behave!)

The end of the allan key is still firmly stuck in the bolt hole so i now can't get the roof off! I recently used a bit of WD40 on each bolt as they can get quite tight from time to time and thought this would help... (obviously not)

Has anyone else had this type of problem? I'm thinking I now need to drill the bloody thing out and then hopefully I can work the bolt loose...

Any suggestions?

no real suggestion on removing the bolt but when you do see here for the correct sequence to undo them in future..........

Also i'd advise you to undo each bolt half a turn each, rather than fully loosening each one before doing the other.........

Probably worth doing on as flat as area as possible too, as i remember not being able to refit the roof once when i was parked on an uneven spot, such was the chassis flex............

I've always followed that order and tightened them up properly the second time round...

I put the roof on outside the flat and never had a problem before, really weird...

http://www.lawson-his.co.uk/scripts/products.php?cat=Removal%20Tools last tool down, grabit damaged srew/bolt extractor, you use one side to drill a pilot hole then the other grips into the hole and will turn the bolt loose, then just fit a new bolt.

good luck

http://www.lawson-his.co.uk/scripts/products.php?cat=Removal%20Tools last tool down, grabit damaged srew/bolt extractor, you use one side to drill a pilot hole then the other grips into the hole and will turn the bolt loose, then just fit a new bolt.

 

good luck

the amount of times i've needed one of these!..think i'll buy some

put some copper grease on all the threads before screwing them back in, they wont sieze so easily then.

http://www.lawson-his.co.uk/scripts/products.php?cat=Removal%20Tools last tool down, grabit damaged srew/bolt extractor, you use one side to drill a pilot hole then the other grips into the hole and will turn the bolt loose, then just fit a new bolt.

 

good luck

The problem in this case is that the end of the allen key got stuck in the hole whilst trying to loosen it. If you continue to try to turn it anti-clockwise (with an extractor) you'll either make the allen key head tighter in the hex hole of the bolt or completely strip the hex out of the bolt head altogether.

I'd have thought that as this happened as it was being undone, the hex of the allen key has just started to round off the hex on the inside of the bolt. Because of this, a normal extractor won't work as the allen key needs to be turned in the 'tighten' direction for it to then go loose in the hex and drop out.

I'd be tempted do drill into the allen key as normal (very carefully) and then try to get some sort of self-tapping screw/bolt into it to turn it clockwise.

Yup that's my plan... I'm hoping that when I drill the broken head it'll come loose but if not then I'm gonna have to try and screw into the alan key head... which should do the job...

Copper Grease will be going on as soon as I get the darn thing off...

Typically the weather is absolutely gorgeous today

I tried drilling it last weekend and blunted the drill bits, they just slipped all over the surface and didn't make a mark...

I went to two garages on Thursday and no joy... both said they couldn't get the end of the allen key out!

Aghhhh!!!

What am I going to do?

my only choice seems to be to go to Toyota?