Our constipated postal delivery finally arrove tonight, including my new slider bolts and the Irwin bolt removers from my brother, so having dispatched a few other tasks I went out to have a serious look at this rounded off slider bolt tonight.

I'd not used these before, but got the general idea, you bray the bolt gripper thing onto the sorry rounded off reminder of your failure as a mechanic, father and human being then ratchet it off, the harder you turn the more the teeth grip into the remains of the bolt and eventually it relents to my ULTIMATE POWER and comes out. Or something...

well, here is the sorry remains of the bolt head

not great, eh? so out with the irwin thing and a BFH

So far, so good. I walloped it on as far as I could and then fitted up the 3/8 > 1/2" adapter to get a ratchet on it and

BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL!

oh. ummm, that wasn't supposed to happen... Hmmm. Right, the slider bolt has sheared off midway down and left the stub in the carrier. Right, lets pull the little rubber caps off and see what we have left shall we?

I had a go at twisting the stub on the bottom out with mole grips but they just spun and chewed up the remains of the stub. Botheration. Ok, well the best thing to do now is get the carrier off the car and see what we can do on the bench. 2x 17mm bolts and it was free of the car. I bungee'd the caliper itself out the way so it wouldn't fall off and dangle on the flexi while I wasn't watching.

I grabbed the stub in the bench vice and tried to twist it, but it just spun in the jaws of the vice so I had to escalate to DEFCON 4 and deploy some heat. A few years ago I got a brazing torch with oxygen and MAPP gas tanks, I've not had much success with brazing, but its a handy thing to have for applying targetted heat

ake that, you knave! I heated it up 'til it was cherry red then clamped the stub of the slider bolt in the vice and walloped the carrier to try and knock the carrier off the slider. This had limited success, so I gave it a few blasts of penetrating oil and hit it a bit more until

Ha, gotcha! it took a while to bray it off, but victory was mine. The carrier was still a bit hot so I had been holding it with some adjustable pliers so it didn't hit the floor when it eventually parted company. I put the carrier down on the bench to cool down a bit while I got some rag and a tent peg and used it to clean out the voids that the slider bolts go into as much as I could. I then used the old top slider bolt and lubed it up with silicone grease and worked it in and out to get it moving as much as possible. I'd also cleaned the carrier down with a wire brush for good measure.

Once it had cooled down, I refitted the carrier to the hub, refitted the disc, the pads and the caliper and bolted it to the carrier with the new slider bolts - well lubed with more silicone grease.

so here it is all back together

The car was still on the lift so I couldn't drop it down and take it for a run to see if it was any better, but the slider was mega broken for sure, and is now a bit better.

Is the heating and percussive maintenence likely to have had a lasting detrimental effect on the carrier? Have I b0rked it/was it b0rked already and should I get a new carrier? The new slider bolts went into the caliper/carrier a lot more easily than the old ones came out and they have had plenty of greasing, but should I hold off driving this thing at 70mph on the queens kings highway or is it probably ok?