First of all I wanted to say is that this site has help me out a lot in helping me maintain my car. You guys are the best, and this site is this best. I just wanted to say thanks to everyone because you guys save me from a lot of headaches. Whatever answeres I'm looking for I can always find it here so basicly I never had to make an account and ask questions.

Anyways, I just bought my eclipse three and a half years ago and right now part of the passanger side front bumber is starting to sag. I check it out and found out that one of the heads on the bolt has broken off. Its probably because I hit a coyota last month while driving in the outskirts of sacramento or something. Anyways, my main question is how do I remove this bolt that has a missing head? I went through the searches and found out my only solution is to "drill it out". How would I go about doing this? Do i just drill through the middle of the bolt or something? What kind of drill bit should i use? One more question is that on the driver side front bumber, I tried to take out one of the bolts but no mater how much i keep turning it doesnt want to come out either! The heads on the bolts are not striped so I dont know what elese could be the problem. Please help me out you guys! Thanks in advance

For the one with no head, you can like you said drill it out. start in the center. Im not sure which one your talking about but, you can then drive in a self-tapping screw to hold then. the one that keeps spinning try to pry a little behind it while you turn it with a flathead screwdriver and it should help to grap on to some threads again so it will come out.

For the one with the head broken off, is there any meat sticking out the other side that you could get with some visegrips?
As for the other I would try that^^^^^, but the threads might be too stripped to do that. If so cut the bolt off flush and drill/tap it out.

Good luck

so THAT is what tapping a bolt means. I never took shop class of any kind so all that "tapping" stuff was foreign to me.

Naw, theres no meat sticking out so I guess drilling is my only option I guess. The last thing I wanted to know is what kind of drill bit I should use on the one the with the broken head?

Originally posted by jrok408
Naw, theres no meat sticking out so I guess drilling is my only option I guess. The last thing I wanted to know is what kind of drill bit I should use on the one the with the broken head?

Carbide tipped drill bit man. You may spend a little extra but they are fast cutting and stay sharp forever. Well worth it imo vs buying cheap metal bits that couldn't drill holes in paper twice in a row wothout dulling then breaking.

I personally would reccomend heading to Sears, paying the $20-$25 for their removal kit. It comes with a reverse drill bit, (drills in with the drill in reverse, that alone pulled my busted bolt out), and several diffrent size reverse screws that are on a drill bit. You drill a hole in the busted bolt, then this screw grips in and pulls it out.

Its not the cheapest way to do it, but a good thing to have...



'98 GS, Altezza backs, Blue LED HVAC, 4-to-1 SSAutoChrome headers, Bomz CAI, 55mm Throttlebody, Magnaflow exhaust

Not sure if you need it but if you haven't actually had the bumper completely off this may be helpful to see some steps and pics of what needs removed and what can stay when you pull the whole front bumper.

About half way down my homepage page there is a tech topic on how to remove the front bumper properly. Lots of pics too.

http://www.rcaz.com