Steam Driver

I saved myself a bunch of money at the machine shop this afternoon. I fairly easily extracted all twelve Dilavar head studs, including the broken one in just a little over an hour. No fuss, no strain, no drama. This has been beat around before here, but for the record here's how I did it.

About 24 hours before hand I soaked the bases of the studs with Kroil (some of them) and the rest with Ballistol. For those of you unfamiliar with Ballistol it's a gun developed in Germany around WWI. Works great for guns and there are anecdotal claims for a bunch of other stuff (the Avon Skin So Soft of gun oils). It was suggested to me that it was a good penetrating oil and I think that may be so. I got to see a lot of it bubbling up around the threads as I heated things up that's for sure. Has a distinctive odor (and not as pleasant as beeswax as I've seen others have used.

For tools I used the Snap-On stud remover as suggested in Wayne's book on rebuilding 911 engines on the unbroken studs with threads remaining. For the broken stub I used another stud remover made for 8mm studs which worked nicely with the smooth stud. It looks like a deep socket and has some kind of eccentric design that clamps the stud harder the harder you pull on it. This tool was left over from some other machine long ago - either the 914-6 or the BMW bikes.

In any case a job I was dreading was done, a bunch of money was saved, and I can move on with it!