Stripped rear brake master cylidner mounting bolts!!

Those mushroom bolts are what this thread is about.

I didn't want to remove the brake hose and the rearset because then I have to deal with messy brake fluid and recharging the line. I guess if I got the whole rearset off it would be easier to work with on a work bench and with vices. But again, I'm trying to prevent disassembly of the braking circuit.

In anycase, I'm afraid to to use a screw extractor cause they say if it breaks off in there, you're fucked. And when I tell you guys this screw is practically cemented in there, I shit you not. With the thread lock on it, it probably needs over 15 lb-ft of torque to remove which is absurd for the size of that screw.

Has anyone else had problems with these 2 specific screws on the gixxer? I'm wondering how anyone would've gotten them off without incident (even a mega professional) - what could've been done?

I guess the problem was just assuming they would come off - so I didn't take any precautions before just trying to loosen them with a 4mm hex. Going forward, what precautions should you take before trying to loosen a small hex screw that has heavy thread lock on it?

I knocked it out of the park with using a chisel as a screwdriver. When I put the chisel in the dremeled slit, it had plenty of leverage. It still took getting red in the face for the screw to loosen.

Nevertheless, here's the end result:



It took so much torque I damaged my chisel as you can see.

What the fuck is Suzuki doing putting red thread lock on these bolts??? Christ.

+1 on the impact driver suggestion for this to never happen again. I knew I was being an amateur somehow. I'll look into getting one ASAP. +2 on the chisel suggestions - I was thinking of getting an extra wide flat head screw driver (if they made them) and they do...it's called a chisel!!! :dblthumb

I measured the bolt and it's 20mm x 5mm for anyone who cares. And the head, before it was ass raped, was a 4mm hex.

Thanks to all - you guys really helped! I'm totally relieved! Time to finish that rearset job. I'll post pics when I'm done.

Miller time! :beer

You know, I agree with you sport-ryder. The medium and light duty bolts on these bikes suck so much. I really only feel comfortable reusing the higher quality bolts with deep & large allens and square drives. You can tell a quality reusable bolt just by looking at it.

The light duty ones, like the ones I stripped (4mm allen heads) look like you can almost chew them like bubblegum. Obviously it held like a motherfucker, but the head is so soft and cheap, I feel like it's counter productive to have something hold so tight with such a fragile head.

The replacements for these bolts is under $2 from Suzuki (which is overpriced OEM) - so that's how cheap they are. I would almost be inclined to get replacements from hardware stores like you mentioned with better drives.

The only problem I have with hardware stores here in the states is that they have more SAE bolts than metric. So you don't have a lot of variety on the metric side of things. Damn founding fathers SCREWED us (no pun intended) :lol