Bleeder Nipple - Busted!

I was trying to bleed my brakes for the first time in my life on my 1970 911T when, shock horror, i managed to snap the nipple clean off!

Has this happen to anybody else or am i on my own....

If others have the same story to share, how did you fix it?

Thanks,

Luis

I had to do this several years ago and did this: Remove the caliper and block the brake line so all the fluid won't leak out. Get a small "stud extractor" that fits the bleed screw hole. Mount the caliper in a vise with soft jaws and soak the screw with liquid wrench. Carefully tap the extractor into the bleed screw, not to far as you do not want to damage the seating surface. Heat the caliper body around the bleed screw with a hair dryer and try turning the extractor out. The heat may help loosen the dissimilar metals and hopefully you can unscrew it. If that fails and the broken bleed screw gets worse, it will require drilling out and I'd have a machine shop do it to insure accuracy. I would also rebuild the caliper after a thorough cleaning. If this makes you squemish, you might want to give it to a machine shop to remove for you. This will cost some $$$ but cheaper than a new caliper...

The problem with stud or screw extractors is they are made out of extremely hard and brittle steel. Very often folks attempt to use them to remove studs or broken screws that are so tightly corroded in place that the remover breaks off in the removee. Once a stud remover is broken off in your part your done for because the stud remover is most likely a harder steel than any drill bit you could use to drill it out. If a stud or screw is so tightly stuck that it breaks off, there is, in my opinion no chance a remover of this type will work. On a part as easy to remove as a brake caliper, save the headache and take it to a reputable machine shop.

Broken extractors are no fun, that's why I suggested the machine shop. But there are removers for broken removers and they allow you to turn the extractor the other way to get it out. Those are very expensive.....