Need Help To Remove A Bolt With Stripped Head

I had a broken bolt and broken tax extraction business for years. And what navy chief aid is true. And if you can not get vice grip on bolt try a left hand drill to back it out or a regular drill from the back side to push it out.
jimsehr
 
+1 on the left handed drill bit !!
 
I hate most screw extractors. I usually have the best luck drilling a hole just a bit smaller then a Allen bit & driving it in to form a new head.

It would be helpful if we knew how it ended up like this. Of you had the bolt fast it will starch it & loosen it.
 
something else i do at times to stripped allen's is to peen the whole end of the fastener so that hex is smaller, then drive the allen back into the tightly resized hex and remove! it works especially good for button head hex
 
+1 for the left handed drill

next time drive a slightly oversize torx into the hex
 
Thanks for all the replies. I have tried the center punch method but the bolt didn't move a bit. As I do not have a left-handed drill bit around, I couldn't use that method also.

Finally I drilled off the head and plus a 2.2 mm diameter hole through the body of the bolt ( M4 size ) before running a 2.5mm tap into the hole of the bolt from the other side hoping that the tap will grip the bolt and screw it out. Unfortunately the bolt didn't move. Obviously there is something such as thread lock holding the bolt in place.

I have also tried to heat it up using a soldering iron but the soldering iron is not powerful enough to build up the temperature.

Now my only option is to drill out the bolt. It's an M4 bolt and the corresponding standard tap drill size is 3.2 mm. As the drill bit may not be perfectly centered with the bolt, I am wondering if I should use a slightly smaller bit such as 3.1 mm to avoid cutting into the original thread in the hole ?
 
If you have a Dremel you can cut a slot with a abrasive cut wheel, I stack three or four to get the size I want , soak with penetrating oil helps too. Then just get a good screwdriver and hold lots of down pressure when turning try both directions if it dosent just come out. It has worked well for me for years .
 
One thing i learned in twenty years of riding bulldozers around is how to remove a broken bolt , all of the aboce suggestions are good , but somethimg that helps the really stubborn ones is if it is possible drill a hole all the way threw the bolt then hit it with the heat , it helps in two ways , first you get more heat in the bolt and less in the part , and it helps give more room for expansion and contraction .

Just a lesson learned the hard way .... It wasnt uncommon to replace two or three broken idler wheel or bogey bolts every week and a threw hole drilled and lots of heat always took out the most stubborn bolts
 
As Silverbullet said, I grind a slot in the head then use a impact screwdriver to back it out. I've had good luck with this method. I also like to use solid carbide drill bits to drill out a broken Allen bolt. They seem to cut good and have less drift than standard drill bits do.
 
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