The drill screams to life!
A customer brought in a Trek Emonda where
the bottle cage bolt that comes with the frame
had snapped below the neck and couldn't be recovered.
They asked if I could do something about it.
↑This is it.
The bottle cage holes aren't rivnut style—
they use M5 hex nuts embedded in the frame during manufacturing.
Cannondale's Super Six does the same thing,
but with carbon frames that have abnormally thin tube walls,
repairs in this area require extreme care.
Well, if it looks impossible from the start, I don't touch it and just dump it on my mentor.
Next time I'll bring him a ten-year-old bottle of Redbreast whiskey.
The bottle cage bolt has snapped below the frame's flush line.
The fact that the bolt is aluminum is a small mercy—
even if it were stainless, I'll try to drill a guide hole right at center
using a small-diameter carbide bit that cuts smoothly.
It worked out well.
From here, I expand the hole with a standard steel bit,
being careful not to damage the nut threads.
Once it reaches a certain diameter and depth,
if I reverse the drill while pressing it against the bottom, sometimes it'll come out.
If that doesn't work, there are more aggressive methods to try,
but I really hope the reverse rotation does the trick.
It's coming out.
Even from here, I can't loosen this broken stud by hand.
But with the drill in reverse rotation, it loosens.
Whirrrr.
At this point, feeling a bit cocky, I switched the drill to forward rotation
and for some reason screwed it back into the frame as a joke—
but the customer didn't find it funny at all.
Since it didn't land, I pulled it back out.
I discarded all the original bolts, including the three other holes,
and retapped the holes.
What I worked on today was the hole on the upper side of the downtube,
but the hole on the lower side of the seatube had especially high resistance
and was in a pre-stripped condition.
It had been like this for over half a year, but
having a single bottle cage only on the seatube looked odd,
so recently they've been riding without a bottle cage.
By the way, the owner of this frame
is a fairly famous and strong rider,
so when there was a bottle cage only on the seatube,
people would wonder things like "Are you going for aero with it only on the vertical tube?"
And when there was no bottle cage,
they'd speculate "Is this for weight weenie reasons, or are you doing a training where you don't drink water?"
and so on—they'd misinterpret it in strange ways.
I have way over 20 "drill screaming" type jobs
that I've taken pictures of but never posted about.
I was thinking of uploading them all at once over the New Year break, but that didn't happen.
I did this one today.
Thinking I should try to keep up and not let them pile up,
I'm writing this now.
A customer brought in a Trek Emonda where
the bottle cage bolt that comes with the frame
had snapped below the neck and couldn't be recovered.
They asked if I could do something about it.
↑This is it.
The bottle cage holes aren't rivnut style—
they use M5 hex nuts embedded in the frame during manufacturing.
Cannondale's Super Six does the same thing,
but with carbon frames that have abnormally thin tube walls,
repairs in this area require extreme care.
Next time I'll bring him a ten-year-old bottle of Redbreast whiskey.
The bottle cage bolt has snapped below the frame's flush line.
The fact that the bolt is aluminum is a small mercy—
even if it were stainless, I'll try to drill a guide hole right at center
using a small-diameter carbide bit that cuts smoothly.
It worked out well.
From here, I expand the hole with a standard steel bit,
being careful not to damage the nut threads.
Once it reaches a certain diameter and depth,
if I reverse the drill while pressing it against the bottom, sometimes it'll come out.
If that doesn't work, there are more aggressive methods to try,
but I really hope the reverse rotation does the trick.
It's coming out.
Even from here, I can't loosen this broken stud by hand.
But with the drill in reverse rotation, it loosens.
Whirrrr.
At this point, feeling a bit cocky, I switched the drill to forward rotation
and for some reason screwed it back into the frame as a joke—
but the customer didn't find it funny at all.
Since it didn't land, I pulled it back out.
I discarded all the original bolts, including the three other holes,
and retapped the holes.
What I worked on today was the hole on the upper side of the downtube,
but the hole on the lower side of the seatube had especially high resistance
and was in a pre-stripped condition.
It had been like this for over half a year, but
having a single bottle cage only on the seatube looked odd,
so recently they've been riding without a bottle cage.
By the way, the owner of this frame
is a fairly famous and strong rider,
so when there was a bottle cage only on the seatube,
people would wonder things like "Are you going for aero with it only on the vertical tube?"
And when there was no bottle cage,
they'd speculate "Is this for weight weenie reasons, or are you doing a training where you don't drink water?"
and so on—they'd misinterpret it in strange ways.
I have way over 20 "drill screaming" type jobs
that I've taken pictures of but never posted about.
I was thinking of uploading them all at once over the New Year break, but that didn't happen.
I did this one today.
Thinking I should try to keep up and not let them pile up,
I'm writing this now.