taz777

I'm trying to remove the stock pair of lock-on grips on my bike. There's a small Torx-head bolt at each end of the grips. I can only undo one of the bolts. The others are completely seized and/or the Torx bolt heads are rounded. I've already tried using a rubber-band to provide more friction between the Torx wrench and bolt head but that hasn't worked.

Any suggestions on how to remove the grips? I don't mind destroying the old grips but I don't want to damage the shifters, brake levers or handlebar.

I've got a new set of grips that I want to fit.

fietsbob

a Dremel with a metal cutting blade helps , you make a slot to unscrew the bolt you screwed up .

Or,
get new bars , hack saw off the grips, to get the shifters and brake levers off, and install the new bars and put the shifters and brake levers on.
then put on your new grips..





.....

SquidPuppet

Drill them out with gradually larger bits.

wschruba

Don't even need to, really. The head is the only thing holding the screw in tension (and the clamp tight). Once you brake through the shoulder of the head, the clamp will spring open. Much easier than messing with a small extractor, if you don't need to.

Or, use the Dremel cutoff to just cut the screw through the clamping slot on the grip.

taz777

Okay guys, thanks for the advice, I’ll tackle this today. It was the last job I needed to do yesterday and had me stumped. I have a Dremel and drill bits. The bolts are tiny aluminium bolts with the screw part around 1mm in diameter so I’ll try drilling the head off first. Because of the location, I’ll need to be extra careful not to damage the frame, hoses, levers, etc.

It’ll be embarrassing to have to take the bike to my LBS to remove a pair of grips! I really find the stock grips uncomfortable and have a pair of Ergon GA2 grips that I want to use.

wschruba

Unless your shifters/brakes are as far up the handlebar as possible, loosen their clamps and slide them towards the center--give yourself extra room to work.

taz777

Yes, that's what I've been doing whilst I've been trying to get the grips off. I can only move the levers to the centre of the bar by about an inch due to the bar thickening towards the centre.

I've swapped grips out several times before as I always change the grips on my bikes as soon as I receive them. But this set seems to have bolts that are seized (I can see a bit of blue Loctite on threaded part that is exposed on the other side of the bolt which is probably aggravating the issue as the bond has to be snapped first but the aluminium bolt is too soft for the required torque.

Once I've got the clamps released I plan to use brute force to twist them off! I daren't risk it with the clamps still fastened though.

taz777

Just to update this thread in case anyone else runs into similar issues in the future, drilling worked for me. I ordered a set of HSS drill bits yesterday so had to wait until today to try this out. First I used a drill bit which was roughly the diameter of the bolt head (around 5mm). This removed the bulk of the bolt head. I rotated the drill at all angles to cut away as much of the bolt head as I could, checking regularly that I wasn't getting too close to the handlebar.

Once I was sure that there was hardly any bolt head left, I used a large flat blade screwdriver between the clamp opening points (i.e. just below where the bolt goes through. Very carefully, I twisted the screwdriver to open up the clamp slightly.

I had to use quite some strength to twist the grips off. I then checked the handlebar to ensure that there was no damage, cleaned up the handlebar and fixed the Ergon GA2 grips on, and finally retightened the levers.

Just a word of warning though: I used a vacuum cleaner to clean up all the metal shavings deposited on the ground and then used a soft brush attachment to go over the bike in case any metal shavings ended up on the bike. A tiny bolt head produces a fair amount of mess on the floor when it's drilled out.