frozen rad wing bolts

[yota]

I bought a used 06 YZ 250f and I can't get the radiator shrouds off. One bolt on ea side is frozen into the threaded insert moulded into the tank. I tried an 18v drill and then an air butterfly wrench with 8mm socket to no avail. Any ideas? thanks

 

[dduzan]

drill it out a little and get an ease out to it...

 

[yota]

drilling won't help, the bolt heads are fine. An easy-out is just gonna spin the inserts too.

 

[danjerman]

Your best bet is to try and find a way to knock the bolt heads off, remove the shrouds, and then attack the problem of the spinning insert.

I had this exact problem on my KX some years back. I labored for HOURS until finally I just cut my rad shroud off and could finally fix the insert. I ended up drilling out the threads of the brass insert, and pop-riveting a small flat rectangular piece of steel to the blown out insert. To that piece of steel, i tapped some threads to hold my radiator shroud back on. I had to drill a new mounting hole to my rad shrouds because the threaded hole I made was slightly offset from the original mount. Once finished, the fix worked wonderfully, and could hardly be noticed.