Replacing Rotors

[The Stranger:Me]

There is a bit of a vibe at 200kph. When you apply the front brake you feel the vibe through the lever and as the bike nears a stop you feel a clunk, so check the rotors and yes there is a fair bit of play in the rivets holding the disk to the carrier on the lhs, also this disk is just below the wear limit.

No problem, time to fit the spares I got from trademe a while back.

No Problem - yeah right.
Remove the front wheel in a short space of time.
Place it on it's side on blocks so as the disk is clear of the ground, pull out the 6mm Allen socket and power bar - snap - bolt 1 socket 0. Damn must be loctited in.

We all know that you apply a bit of heat to remove a bolt fixed with loctite. But how much heat?

The bolts are into an alloy wheel which we want to remain true, and right next to a sealed wheel bearing full of grease and sealed with a rubber seal.

Well it appears about 230 to 250 degrees centigrade is required.

Not worried about the tyre as the heat is only required locally and the rim being alloy, should (I think) dissipate the heat adequately such that any heat reaching tyre will be minimal.

But now I am a little reluctant to apply that sort of heat next to the wheel bearing. Ok, just remove the wheel bearing. Wrong, needs special tool.

So, any ideas.
1) Anyone had experience removing a GSXR 1000 front rotor have any tips they wish to share?
2) How do you remove the wheel bearings without special tool?
3) How do you get that sort of heat into the bolt (and keep it fairly local) I have a pretty mean hot air gun, which easily starts fires that I feel should do it. I went looking for a small butane torch, but Supercheap only sell the gas canisters (WTF?) and Repco say there are so many P addicts in West Auckland that they can't keep up with demand.

[nadroj]

Don't heat the bolt if poss or quench the bolt before undoing (dry ice works best). Also you can try tightening the bolt to break the loctite - that way you don't strip the untightening side of the hex.
Good luck

[Two Smoker]

Dont use the allen key sockets... they snap very easily... Use a proper allen key, and if you need more torque, use a 12mm spanner for extra leverage...

[Cajun]

Never had a problem getting out rotor bolts, just bit of leveage not to much

I always used allen key sockets, with out a problem, only used this method on friday to swap a front rotor on the hayabusa

[jonbuoy]

Dick smith do a small butane torch, its got a pencil tip flame.

[Ixion]

Impact driver?

I've never broken a socket allen key. But even more than "ordinary" sockets you need to get top quality - SnapOn, Koken ,Stahlville. The ones you get in the $50 socket sets are not much good.

I doubt a butane torch will get the bolt hot enough, thats a pretty good heat sink, you need an oxy torch.

[The Stranger:Me]

Impact driver?

I've never broken a socket allen key. But even more than "ordinary" sockets you need to get top quality - SnapOn, Koken ,Stahlville. The ones you get in the $50 socket sets are not much good.

I doubt a butane torch will get the bolt hot enough, thats a pretty good heat sink, you need an oxy torch.

Thank you all for your input. Problem now solved.

An Allen key and spanner was not going to work. I had a socket and a 450mm powerbar on the bolts and was getting almost quarter turn on the power bar and they still wouldn't budge.

Actually the elcheapo socket were excellent in this case.
I used to work on tower cranes and had a part set of Stahlwille allen sockets around from those days. Where as the cheap one snapped the Stahlwille just started rooting the bolt head.

I reshaped a soldering iron (hey it was all I had) and jambed it in the head of one bolt. That didn't seem to help, but that was the only one I got out with an impact driver, so I guess it must have helped a bit. On the rest, the impact driver just started wrecking the head of the bolt.

Spoke to the guy in Waihi who recos disks and he suggested putting a drift on the bolts and giving them a good whack with a big hammer first. This is how they were removed in the end.

Thank you all for your ideas.

[ManDownUnder]

Spoke to the guy in Waihi who recos disks and he suggested putting a drift on the bolts and giving them a good whack with a big hammer first. This is how they were removed in the end.

Thank you all for your ideas.

Yup loctite sets quite brittle so a smack along the bolt will often break it up, or fracture it anyway so any movement afer that will turn the glue to powder as the bolt unscrews.

Just unscrewing the bolt without the "technical tap" often leaves the loctite intact so it binds on the bolt the whole way out.