Does anyone has any ideas on how to remove stripped wheel collars? Anything tha works better than cutting them off...

DRILL OUT THE SCREW

When you drill out the screw make sure you use a VERY HARD drill bit or you will dull it before you ever get the screw drilled out. I suggest a SOLID cobalt or SOLID tungsten drill bit.

A couple of words of caution/advice - They are not cheap and they are brittle.

You should seriously reconsider cutting them off. A few seconds with a cutoff wheel on a dremel will do the job. Wheel collars are cheap. Even if you drill it out you will not be able to reuse it.

Try grinding a fresh end on the allen wrench. Sometimes it's actually the wrench that is in worse shape than the set screw itself. If that doesn't work, I agree with Campy, cut it off with a dremel. Something you might consider for future installations is replacing the tiny set screw with a 4-40 or 6-32 socket head screw, they hold up better.

i second the idea about slicing that thing off with a cutting wheel and dremel...

I,ve never ran across a recalcitrant collor that could not be remove by grasping with a quality pair of vice grips and rotating a few degrees back and forth while pulling. Even if whoever had filed a flat on the axle they can always be rotated a bit and the ones where they did not bother with the flat will pull off easy with a 360 rotation.

Having said that before you replace give some thought to trying this. Slide the wheel on and cut a circle of paper card stock about three eights diameter and push on the axle to make an impression. Cut the hole out with a blade for a tight push on fit over the axle and slide tight aginst the wheel and slide on a small washer the fit is not critical. Just solder this with a 140 watt or better iron and acid core solder with a dab of paste flux. When cool just cut out the paper which protects the wheel even it it is plastic and provides the proper lateral fit.

Try this and you will never endure the walk of shame to retreve an airplane that has lost a wheel. This method is far more reliable than any set screw type collor even with a filed flat on the axle. Once first done it very easy to replace a wheel for whatever reason in just a few minutes with an iron.

John

Great, thanx guys. I think i'll go ahead and cut them off, and maybe try a few methods I found on here about keeping the wheels on. [8D]

to make sure a collar does not fall off during flight I put a small piece of fuel tubing on the shaft to hold it onin case the screw comes loose

Ditto, I do the same. Takes two minutes and no solder required.