I was in the process of replacing my driver's side front fender with a slightly bent (thanks UPS) replacement part. Nearly at the end of my repair, it looked as though everything would pull in and line up correctly but then one of the bolts snapped. This is the bolt at the top of the fender, the one you have to have the driver's side door open to reach. Without that bolt there, the fender does not line up correctly. There are other parts of the car where you can leave out one bolt and it's no prob, but this one is necessary.
Okay, broken bolt. The head's snapped off below the level of the surrounding metal. That's a pain, but not the end of the world, right? I went and got an extractor, drilled out the end of the bolt, and attempted to extract. And the bolt extractor broke off.
I got what I thought was all of the bolt extractor out, attempted to re-drill the hole in the tip of the bolt and try again with a new extractor. No dice, the fender keeps being in the way. So I drive another vehicle for a couple weeks, waiting for a chance to work on this. Which came today. I took off the fender for clearance, and attempted to drill a new pilot hole for a new bolt extractor. In this attempt, I discovered that the bolt is harder metal than the bolt-hole, because my drill bit keeps slipping and eating away at the surrounding metal. It got real hard to tell what's bolt and what's bolt-hole, so I put the drill down to take a closer look.
What I find is a chunk of bolt extractor wedged into my bolt. There's not enough of that to be able to grab it with pliers. I think I've messed things up pretty good here. I can barely tell what's bolt and what's frame, now. But I've got to get this bolt out, and some kind of new bolt in.
Any suggestions?
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