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The anti theft bolts have been done up far too tightly, and have wrecked the key .

I followed the advice on various postings on the forum, all to no avail. Its been to 3 different tyre places, and the damn thing wont shift with an easy out. Apparently there isn't enough room to weld a nut onto the bolt (Nimrods), and I've also tried drilling the bolt and whacking a socket extension bar into the void in the middle of the locking bolt, but its on far too tightly to shift it.

It runs out of MOT in 2 weeks time, and needs a lot of brake work to get it through, so drastic measures are now called for - it looks like cutting the wheel off is going to be my only remaining option

At least the replacement standard bolts were cheap at £8.10 for 4

Went through similar grief a year or so back - I got all 4 of mine out by drilling them out to the full depth of the head to about 9 or 9.5 mm diameter. I found that if you drill deep enough to virtually get into the threaded section, the remaining shank is so thin it stretches lengthwise and in doing so looses all the tension.

It was a horrible job, that I did in about 3 sessions, but I got them all out without any damage to wheels or hubs.

I've managed to get one out, but after drilling through the shank of the second one I made the mistake of trying to shift it with a stud extractor, which subsequently snapped leaving the head firmly embedded in the drilled out portion. So it looks like cutting the wheel off is my best option now, as I've got to get that particular wheel off as there is a problem with the caliper on that wheel (and my mot expires in 2 weeks).

I'll get some decent drill bits ordered, and will drill out the remaining 2 bolts after I've got the car through an mot.

i bought a vectra 4 years ago. with no documents and of course no locking wheel key.

trip to my local tyre center and 20 mins later and £20 lighter all 4 wheel bolts were off .....

any good tyre / wheel garage should be able to get lockers off with no key.....

3 different places have had a go, and none of them succeded.......... the buggers are on stupidly tight.

It doesn't help that I live on the coast, so the sea air won't have helped matters. The previous owner was a farmer who ran it with bugger all maintenance (and he also lived on the coast ). Every bolt that I attempt to undo had been tightened up by a gorilla, or has corroded to hell.

The dirty deed has been done, and the wheel was cut off

I'm now trying to drive out severly corroded brake pad pins

Catflem wrote:I'm now trying to drive out severly corroded brake pad pins

Hope you have better luck with them - I had to drill half of mine out.

[quote="Catflem
I'm now trying to drive out severly corroded brake pad pins [/quote]

Did mine the other day. I used a 9/64 allen key attachment, it's a good fit through the small hole in the caliper and is flat ended so it doesn't mushroom the end of the pins, the ones that have a hex on the other end to fit in a screwdriver. Put it into the extension holder and hit the end. After a couple of good smacks they came out easily. Some people have had trouble with them though.
Replaced my pins with new ones, £10 for pins, springs and R clips to do both sides.

I'm getting to hate this car

I managed to get one pin out, which gave me enough slack to remove the rear disc in order to investigate an abs problem. There is enough meat left on the pads for me to put the seized brake pad pin on the back burner for now.

The brake back plate is very badly corroded and has obviously been letting water into the gubbings of the disc - everything was a nasty shade of orange.

The rear abs sensor was bent at a funny angle, and two teeth on the reluctor ring were chewed up

Replacing the abs sensor should be easy enough, but I'm not looking forward to removing the rear hub - has anyone had any luck with filling damaged reluctor teeth with an epoxy metal filler ?.

I could try filling the damaged teeth in situ, and wouldn't have to go through the aggro of removing the rear hub if an epoxy metal filler will fool the abs sensor into thinking that all teeth were present and correct.