Anybody have a good suggestion on how to remove a stripped hex headed muffler screw?



Once these little babies are soaked in fuel for a bit, they seem to get really soft and strip out on me.

Maybe I should sprinkle my engines with baby powder when I'm done flying them for the day?

perhaps take your dremel with a cutting wheel and make a slot for a flat blade screwdriver?

G'day Mate,
I somehow don't think the fuel is softening the metal, more likely you were using the wrong sized Hex Key.
Just cut a slot in it as was stated above.

It depends on how much screw you can get to. Craftsman makes some really good screw extractors. They kind of look like a counter bore, but bite on reverse. You pin punch a center mark in the screw, lightly, just enough to put a dimple in to start the extractor and keep it centered so it doesn't eat the engine. Now using your drill in reverse, try to unscrew it out. If enough of the screw is showing, and the extractor is small enough, you should be OK. If the drill is down in the hole, you are going to have to spot drill the screw, using a tap drill for the size of the screw. This is going to bugger up your threads a bit, BUT. After you have a spot drilled in the center of the screw, then you drill a small hole and then use a screw remover ( different tool than above, this is a tappered spiral, again reverse pitch that you use with a small adjustable wrench or tap holder to back the drill out). If these two fail, you can chemically remove the screw, but that requires a full strip of anything iron from the engine, IE a bare crank case or muffler. I'm not going into this because at the moment, I can't remember what was used, but I think it is alum. You can check on some of the machining sites on Yahoo Groups and there is bound to be a thread on this. I just can't remember which site it was. I think Jobshophomeshop group.

Try to attach the photo again.

Don

i drilled the head off in a similar situation wher i striped a cooling head screw. GOOD LUCK

I just used the small craftsman screw extractor rigged in a screwdriver type handle and just backed the muffler screw right out. worked like a charm. I have the 3 pack of screw extractors and used the small one.
Fred