Dag-Nab-It broke a bolt off

[Beau-Kat]

Dag-Nab-It broke a bolt off on my RSV seat today. I had one loosen and fall off one time and luckily found it sitting on the engine. So, today after doing some maintenancec, i tightened one too tight .

 

Any ideas on a fix?

 

When I do come up with a fix, I'm gonna add some small rubber washers between the seat pan and the nuts to keep them from loosening. Maybe use a light strength version of Lock Tite on them.

[BOO]

Yeah it seems if you don't keep them really tight then they fall off.

I have no nuts on mine, I never put them on, the seat ain't going anywhere with my big butt on there.

BOO

[V7Goose]

I have never had one of mine come loose, and I just do a "medium" tightness with a socket each time I put the seat back on. Even so, at about 62,000 miles I had one of the bolts twist off real easy (with all the light mods and stuff I do, I have had the seat off MANY MANY times in the past four years).

 

The fix was very easy:

 

• I simply drilled out the remaining stud (very soft metal, easy to drill),
  
• pulled out enough staples from the seat cover to get my fingers up in there,
  
• scrounged up a same-size bolt from my spares can (cut to proper length if necessary),
  
• smeared a little silicone cement or Goop on the bolt near the head and stuck it in the hole from the top,
  
• Re-stapled the seat cover back in place
  

Done. Just bolted the seat back on.

 

If you have any problems with the nuts loosening, you can solve that by just taking a pair of vice grips and slightly mashing the threads on the seat studs. This distorts them enough that a nut won't spin easily. Use care and only do it enough so that they nut is just a little too tight to turn with your fingers. The one downside to that is you will need to use the socket to completely remove the nut instead of just loosening it and then spinning it off with your fingers, but if you are afraid of loosing one, that solves it. The other more common solution is to just by a pair of self locking nuts with nylon inserts at the hardware store.

Goose