Thread: What happened to your D3/D4 today?

Roof rails came off ok. Nothing frozen. All the plastic caps disintegrated when touched.

I thought "Ok, there's 4 nuts on each side, I'll put 6mm flange head bolts with nylon washers to keep the water out" while they're off.

The 6 where the rails were went in fine. The passenger side front (which had a plastic "screw" in it) was a bit tight toward the bottom, but went in fine. The drivers side however bottomed out about 5mm shy of the end of the bolt, and the bolts I'm using are made from cheese (high tensile my arse), so it snapped off clean at the surface of the nut. I was winding it in thinking "well, the passenger side got a bit tight toward the end, so this is to be expected". *snap*

I thought "no worries", I have stuff I can use to sort this out. So I drilled a nice big pilot hole down the center of the bolt and proceeded to fill it with an ez-out which also snapped off clean. No problem, I have carbide bits, so I drilled down the center of the ez-out and then proceeded to use a carbide burr to enlarge the hole large enough to fully fit the snapped off end of the burr.

Now I have a solid carbide shaft inside the sleeve of an ez-out which is securely fixed inside a hollowed out M6 bolt.

What's harder than carbide you ask? Well my curious friends, that'd be diamond. Now, diamond burrs are fragile beasts so I thought I'd better do it wet. An hour of carefully watering the hole while working it with the diamond burr I managed to dig out about 1/4" of ez-out lined carbide. Did a credible job before I finally ran out of diamond.

I've had a scrape around and found another diamond burr set I had hiding "just in case", but after spending the best part of 3 hours on it so far and giving up in disgust I'm considering leaving it. I will probably go back to it later, but right now I've had enough.

Another job where my brain is subconsciously saying "now we've ****ed it, how can we possibly make it worse?"

Is that one of the M6 roof bolts that screw into replaceable inserts?

Oh my god. I've just looked at Microcat and it looks like you're right. Please tell me these "replaceable inserts" just screw out with an appropriately sized socket. Part number would appear to be AYR500061.

Yes, they're just screwed-in.

Well, a quick spin with a 13mm socket and it's out. You have just made my day!

On the other hand, I've just spent the best part of 4 hours (I went and had another go) on a ladder bent over the roof of the car, 3 carbide drill bits, 2 carbide burrs, an ez-out and 4 diamond burrs trying to remove a sheared bolt in a fitting that is replaceable for ~$10.

After the rails came off yesterday I put in an order to Rimmers for all the plastic caps and covers that broke. 5 hours after that I sent them an E-mail and asked if they could tack one of the replaceable inserts on to my order. Woke up to a confirmation in the affirmative this morning.

I've tried this previously with "other" suppliers and they'd already "processed the order" so I'd need a second order with another lot of postage. Pretty happy with Rimmers at this point. I don't usually use them, but I will be in future.

Originally Posted by BradC

After the rails came off yesterday I put in an order to Rimmers for all the plastic caps and covers that broke. 5 hours after that I sent them an E-mail and asked if they could tack one of the replaceable inserts on to my order. Woke up to a confirmation in the affirmative this morning.

I've tried this previously with "other" suppliers and they'd already "processed the order" so I'd need a second order with another lot of postage. Pretty happy with Rimmers at this point. I don't usually use them, but I will be in future.

Is that the plastic caps that sit in the rail and cover the screw holes ? I 3d printed a set when taking my rails off to clean and check for rattles.

Yeah, those insert caps and also the plastic "screws" that go through the front trim pieces. I have the short roof rails.