SCAutos.net

Yesterday I went to Advance Auto and purchased a new drain plug since mine had gotten kind of worn. Well today I got up underneath the car and started to tighten it down, when all of a sudden.... PING! You guessed it, the head of the plug broke off completely in my socket. The rest of the bolt is flush against the side of the oil pan and will not come out by any available means. Damn it, of all the days to not have my harry potter wand with me. So I got to go to Lowes and by myself a new Hitachi cordless drill for the screw removal kit my parents bought me for Christmas (even though at the time I didn't have a drill to use it with, lol). The following is a pic of said plug head.

Oops. Hope you get it fixed.

Yikes! At least you already had the screw removal kit. LOL. I'm sorry you had a hard time with it. You just don't know your own strength huh?

When I was a tech at Rapid Lube, one of the other guys did that to a drain plug and left it on some guys car like that. He didn't even tell him. It may be a pain to do it on your own sometimes, but at least you know everything was done right. I don't trust anyone else to touch my car except for my brother and he is a master tech.

Were you tightening it in place or removing the old one?

Tightening it.

im changing mine today. hope i dont fail!

How much force did you use to tighten it? Sounds like you went past the plugs shear threshold... Sucks regardless.

That's the thing, it really wasn't that tight, which is why I kept going.

You've been fooled. Hope it gets fixed!

Well, after misplacing my screw removal kit, and then finding it, I gave the broken drain plug a shot tonight. The bit just bored into the plug, creating a small indentation, instead of actually grabbing hold of it. There's a different removal kit that I saw at Lowes where it actually threads down into whatever you're drilling and you do it that way.

The second one is the one you want... It sets up a left hand thread in the broken section and then you just turn it and it will back the broken portion out. Good luck.

What I might try tomorrow, before I go buy another extractor kit, is to slot the bolt with my dremel and then go at it with a flat head bit on my drill. Even if I can't get it with that, it might provide enough material and grip for what I already have. If not, then I can try the other kit.

Good luck... Just be careful near the oil pan.

Think it's about time for an update. So after not having any luck with the screw removal kit, I broke out the dremel and went to work. I probably should've tried this from the get go, but I didn't think about it until I became really desperate. Thankfully it worked, I dremeled a slot into the bolt and then used my cordless drill and a flat-head bit to back it out. Put a new bolt in, did NOT overtighten it, and everything is good now.

Yay!!!