Hey all,

I had the wheels off the bike a few days ago and I thought I would also remove the brake rotors and sprocket and thus prepare the wheels for some black paint (I think red with black wheels would look great). Anyway, I tried for a bit to get the allen bolts out with a socket wrench with an allen attachment and met with utter failure. Those bad boys are in there tight, and I definitely don't want to be that noob who broke off an allen bolt in his wheel when going at them with a breaker bar.

So anyway, is there anyone in the Washington DC area who has an impact wrench and wouldn't mind helping me work on some GS wheels if I brought some beers over to their garage?

I promise I'm not a total weirdo, stable job, girlfriend and all that.   

Use a long piece of metal pipe to extend the length of your wrench. This will increase the torque with little effort. Some yahoo had about a 20 foot breaker bar on his rear axle last week. He posted pics. You probably only need a few feet the unscrew the rear axle. Get your GF to turn the breaker bar while you hold the other side of the rear axle fixed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaker_bar

Pretty sure he doesn't want to mess with a breaker bar...

If you use a breaker bar or pipe or extra leverage on those wheel allens, chances are they WILL break. So be careful. 2 of mine broke off in the darn wheels and I spent about $30 in large ez outs (which also kept braking) and drill bits. to finally drill out the remainder. Is SUCKS the mighty when that happens. I tried a small torch to heat the remainder but it wouldn't get hot enough and I didn't want to chance screwing up something else, so I drilled and risked that. It came out alright but was a complete mess.

Good luck. Hopefully someone else has a better idea.

You could grab yourself one of these from home depot for the price of some beer and gas to get to someone else's house to fix it...... http://www.homedepot.com/Tools-Hardware/h_d1/N-5yc1vZ1xiyZarnk/R-100022376/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

Just make sure you set the wheel down on something properly so you don't bend the brake disc or the chainring. Spray it with some PB blaster 15 minutes before you start as well.

when I did my front end swap, I used a craftsman allen wrench, and a piece of pipe over the shank to give better leverage.  there will be risks however you do it, so use common sense

I can hit it with an air impact if you feel like bringing it up to Baltimore but I second tt_fours suggestion to buy yourself a decent hand impact, that's a tool you will use a lot if you plan to work on your own bike.

-Jessie

Very cool guys thanks for the tips. tt_four, thanks for the link to that tool, i've never even heard of one of those before.
Jessie, thanks for offering your garage & help. I'll grab one of those hand impact drivers and give it a shot. I think you're right- it will probably be handy in the future. I'll let you know if I have no luck, thanks again.

While your at it, pick up a tube of valve grinding compound.  Put a liottle of that on your socket tip first to help prevent rounding off the bolt head.  Good luck!

-Jessie