Porsche Enthusiasts Club Forum

Somebody/sometime has nicely rounded off two of the crosshead screw heads and I can't for the life of me persuaded them to turn..... need to get them off to replace bulbs ....... ARGH!!

I suppose I will have to drill the heads right out, but what do you think my chances of extracting the rest of the screw afterwards will be?

Anybody been here before and with calm reassuring advice?

Cheers

Rob

Ok, these are a massive pain in the ars 2 drill out! They just end up be pushed thought the plastic casing! Ur need 2 remove the bumper, remove the fog lights from thebumper, I drilled mine out then used some chemail metal 2 fill the hole, then used a larger self tapering screws.

Thanks for the quick reply - I wasnt thinking it would be THAT much work

Will try drilling from the front first - steady hand and a sharp new bit. Hopefully with a bit of WD40 soaking in then will use some pliers to try and grip the stubs. But not this afternoon.........

Rob

The stud is very hard, and I hardly thouched it with a drill bit, the heat just soften up plastics and then forced it though. U could fix another bolt in place with chemical metal ? I just went 4 the quickest route in the end as I was doing a few other bits while the bumper was off. I wanted 2 upgrade the fog lights bulbs 2 White light like I had with my pop ups. But this is the very reson iv not got around 2 it yet!

Hi

Aldi had some screw extraction bits in during the week, ideal for getting rounded screws out.

Try Ebay for " Damaged Nut and Bolt Remover Screw "
Or google shopping " rounded screw bits "
Si.

Due to the stud been the only thing remain, the extractor tool won't do anything more the the drill Bit will do in this case.

I've been doing the very same job on mine today! The screws, erm.. screw, into an insert in the plastic housing. But the plastic breaks very easily. I managed to drill mine out (whilst avoiding too much heat, as already mentioned) & will be fitting some M3 nuts & bolts instead. It does mean that I'll have to remove the whole lamp unit if I need to change a bulb in the future.

Hmmmm!

A job for next Saturday morning I think. Thanks all for your thoughts and advice - seems like its a pretty common problem. Will report back!

Cheers Rob

How did you remove the foglight-someone suggested removing the whole bumper to do this.

thanks
Van

If you drill off the heads of the screws then you can pull the glass front off the light unit.

Once in, with the glass bit totally removed (connections removed as well) then you can remove the plastic back piece from the bumper - it's held on with some large nuts, and it easy to get off.

As mentioned, the screws whose heads you have drilled off (now called studs, perhaps) run into brass inserts in the plastic back piece. These can be drilled out, if you are careful (go from behind with a stand drill.)

Replace the screws/studs with some M4 stainless items (preferably hex insert cap head) to ensure it doesn't happen again.


Oli.

Hi,

Once you've got the old screws out, I'd recommend smearing the new screw threads with copper grease to make 'em easier to get out at a later date.

Ben

The bolts are certaily easy to get to if your car looks like mine -

You can 'just' get to the bolts with the bumper on, either by removing the batwing or arch liners.

It was raining this morning - then the rugby and beer got in the way, so no progress

Will certainly drill out and remove as zcacogp suggests then rebuild with stainless allen head bolts with plenty of copper stuff!

Will post some pics for future reference

Thanks all for you commisserations and advice

Rob

Good luck with that...........

I did mine last year, what a night mare, i managed to drill mine thru the fitting then fitted small nuts and bolts , M3 i think ?

I heated the nut with a small gas soldering iron then pushed it into the plastic casing which melted its way in.
I can now do the screws up as you would the originals, from the front.

I don't usually or like bodging things like this but with the price of new ones i didn't think it was worth it.