Changing Cleats?

minterno

hi guys,I went to change the cleats on my cycle shoes (NW brand) and i have a seized bolt on one of them,have used wd40 a few times but its locked solid,i cut away the cleat in the end and was able to put the bolthead in a vice but its seized solid and the threaded plate is turning inside the sole,i took out the insert in the shoe and was thinking(as a last resort) of cutting a small hole and extracting the threaded plate and could then try some heat treatment on it,aside from buying new shoes,has any one and suggestions and is this a common problem,cheers

minterno

got the bolt out tru the inside of the shoe and put the piece on the stove and the heat broke the seized threads so sorted now,regards

macnab

Just for future reference, WD40 is not a parting agent or a penetrating oil, diesel would be a better option. If you want the good stuff then Plusgas is great. I have been doing maintenance on industrial machinery for 24 years and would only use WD40 if I couldnt find anything else. Its a water dispersant with some light lubricating ability.

Hmmzis

In general when a bolt has seized so badly I'd just use a drill to get the remaining bolt material out (this is when the bolt head just snaps clean off or so badly damaged that any wrenching is futile). Then use a thread tool to remove the screw's thread bits left in the part the bolt was in.

Now, it's easy enough to do that with alu parts and softer steel but hardened steel might be tough to drill out. Heat treatment might be the best option for that.

doozerie

Hmmzis wrote:

Now, it's easy enough to do that with alu parts and softer steel but hardened steel might be tough to drill out.

That's for sure, as I was reminded when I recently tried to drill into what I took to be a regular wood screw with a rounded head. Even with a good quality 2mm steel bit all that 10+ minutes of drilling with a decent cordless drill yielded was a shiny dent (and it barely even qualified as a dent) in the screw. I wasn't entirely sure that the drill itself came out unscathed either

mp31

To state the obvious but remember to dab some grease onto the new bolts before installing the cleats - this should stop this happening again.

minterno

macnab wrote: »

Just for future reference, WD40 is not a parting agent or a penetrating oil, diesel would be a better option. If you want the good stuff then Plusgas is great. I have been doing maintenance on industrial machinery for 24 years and would only use WD40 if I couldnt find anything else. Its a water dispersant with some light lubricating ability.

yeah,i know wd40 is not the best for penetrating but its all i had in the shed,it turned ok in the end but took most of the day,no grease either so i can look forward to the same next time:),thanks for the replys guys