I Have Rusty Nuts.

A car / problem solving question, if you please:

I went to remove the front and rear number plates today to replace them with some spanky new ones.

They've been on since (ahem) '94, and the plastic caps to protect the screws are long gone. Needless to say the screws themselves are 100% iron oxide and dome shaped.

Having taken a crosshead screwdriver to them, I've now turned each screwhead into a hollowed out cone. Well done me.

WD40, and a hacksaw blade to recreate the head, I was thinking? Any better ideas? I dont think drilling them out is going to be easy, given I want to reuse the threaded holes theyre in.

You might try screw extractors (you can get a decent set from Halfords, blue and yellow packaging with 'LAZER' or something in big letters) to go with your electric driver/drill... or you could try just grasping them with pliers.

Given you've made a hollowed out cone, you've already got something the extractors could work with.

http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/s...4448_langId_-1

Well look at that.

Learn something new every day. These screws are pretty small though, I hope the smallest one isnt too big.

That's them, yeah. If you like I'll get em out (steady on) when I get home and check how big the smallest one is. It's pretty darn small, though, I was fighting with a sheared 8mm thread bolt on my CB5 and was using the middle sized ones to remove it so the standard screws on a car's plates should be okay for the smaller ones.

It doesn't take too much, though... the extractor will just suddenly catch and spin the screw out like *snaps fingers* that!

Excellent.

I feel a "haha" moment coming on when my nuts begin to loosen and pop out, one by one.

We should leave this I think.







(technically, they're screws, I know)

Don`t forget the can of Plusgas as well , WD40 is absolute cackola at helping undo rusty stuff that is really corroded , then again it sounds like this is beyond even Plusgas .

[punyXpress]

Can you get to the inside of the panel?
If so, use a mole wrench to screw them IN ( towards the open air ) after applying plus gas as xXBADGERXx suggests.