Originally Posted by
FBinNY
It's Deja Vu all over again. Just the other day I (with an apology) asked if the OP with a similar issue had remembered to use the stem expander bolt to drive the wedge free. It was a crap shoot guess intended to eliminate an unlikely omission before he went to destructive lengths to free his stem.
It turned out I nailed it, so the same question --- is the wedge out?
In other words, did you back off the bolt say a 1/4" then tap it down with a hammer and watch it fall that 1/4"? (Edit: for bolts with heads for allen keys, I put the key in the long way and tap the key. Not a whole lot of people are going to judge you for scarring the chrome at the bottom of the hole. If it is a raised head like say a Peugeot UO-8, I'd use a wood block.)
Ben