It's no coincidence...

[uudfourty]

...that it takes a 13 millimeter socket for exhaust flange removal on an 81 gs550.

lucky 13.

4 drill bits, 2 days and one 8mm 1.25 tap later....

later this week-- carb boot o-rings.
it'll be a riot.

dammit.

[Nessism]

I had good luck getting the carb boot screws out on my 550's by removing the outer screw with vice grips and then spinning the boot to crack loose the inner bolt. This process failed on my 850 though.

Good luck to you...and hope they come loose easily for you.

[Steve]

If it takes a 13 mm socket to remove the bolt, you can rest assured that the bolt has been replaced with an American-made bolt. :shock:

Absolutely NONE of the Japanese or European vehicles I have worked on in the past 30+ years has needed a 13 mm wrench on a factory-supplied bolt or nut. I have also not seen any metric bolts available at Ace Hardware, Lowe's, Home Depot, Auto Zone, etc. that used a 12 mm wrench.
The same size bolt as the factory put in there now requires a larger wrench. ](*,)


.

[uudfourty]

How badly did it fail, Ness?

it failed-- it just didn't work and you had to do something else or

it failed-- and broke the bolt.


Steve:
That doesn't shock me, really. There's such a menagerie and hodgepodge of fasteners, bushings, and makeshift crap on this bike (none of it mine, of course) that I wouldn't know what was stock if it slapped me.

But, my main concern has always been fuction over form, so I'm not too concerned about it.

What it lacks in original parts it makes up for in pain-in-the-ass.

[robertob]

If it takes a 13 mm socket to remove the bolt, you can rest assured that the bolt has been replaced with an American-made bolt. :shock:

Absolutely NONE of the Japanese or European vehicles I have worked on in the past 30+ years has needed a 13 mm wrench on a factory-supplied bolt or nut. I have also not seen any metric bolts available at Ace Hardware, Lowe's, Home Depot, Auto Zone, etc. that used a 12 mm wrench.
The same size bolt as the factory put in there now requires a larger wrench. ](*,)


.

Europeans use 13mm heads on 8mm bolts like us. In the US/Europe it's ISO (or DIN sometimes) while in Japan they use JIS. Same reason they use 10mm x 1.25 instead of 10mm x 1.50 like us & Europe.

But you might notice that if you buy replacement bolts from your Suzuki dealer they're ISO bolts now because all the mfg. are trying to switch over to ISO.

[robertob]

I had good luck getting the carb boot screws out on my 550's by removing the outer screw with vice grips and then spinning the boot to crack loose the inner bolt. This process failed on my 850 though.

Good luck to you...and hope they come loose easily for you.

I did almost this - I used the socket adapter from my impact driver to give the screws a good hard knock with my favorite tool (32 oz ball peen), and then used vicegrips to loosen the outer screws. The inner screws came out pretty easy by spinning the boots like you did.

[Nessism]

How badly did it fail, Ness?

it failed-- it just didn't work and you had to do something else or

it failed-- and broke the bolt.

Getting the outer screws out is easy with vice grips. The inners screws did not loosen on the 850 when spinning the boots so I had to use an impact on a long extension. Worked out ok in my case. Hope you have similar luck.

Good luck.

[uudfourty]

i've got an impact driver, but I'm going to use that after I try with the vice grips. I'm just tired of drilling out broken bolts. At home, at work... I should buy stock in a drill bit company.