I started replacing fluids on my new to me K100RS this arvo and I can see I'll need some Allen headed socket drives. What are people using? 3/8" or 1/2" drive?

My tension wrench is 1/2" but it's really showing it's age, the scale is very hard to read and doing the drain plugs at the back end today the tool was right at the bottom of it's scale. I guess I could clean it up though to save some dollars.

Also, is there anywhere local to get em? I see a lot of them from the UK on ebay.

Do you mean the Allen headed bolts for the oil filter and the such?

I use these:

Is that what you mean?

OK, after a search on Google images, now I know what you mean. No I don't use them.

Bursons may have them, Tradetools might also.

The haynes manual gives a torque figure for the hex bolts. I figured if it has a torque figure you may as well use it.

Last Fall, I bought a set of 180⁰ swivel allen keys. They were on sale for $20.
I had my doubt about the quality, but after using them extensively during the winter, they are still as good as when they were new. I had never seen them before.
It's very versatile as the long side is cut in a ball shape.




If you are trying to find a place to buy a set Click here

CF

Wow! That's a nice set.

I would have snapped those getting that sump plug out today
The crush washer was waffer thin and larger than the bolt head.

I scrubbed the tension wrench with steel wool and can read it again, yahhh, 1/2" it is.

I have both half inch and 3/8 inch torque wrenches for doing up fasteners. the 3/8" is up to 8mm allen bolts. I think the only thing I use the half inch is for the rear wheel bolts!

I have had to use the 1/2 inch drive but only with a breaker bar to loosen some bolts/nuts. I have got a 1/2" to allen socket so just swap out the adapter into it.

I don't want to start an uproar here, but I'll give you advice that has served me well in 40 years as a professional fleet maint. mechanic. Take it with a "grain of salt". It's only a recommendation from experience not gospel.
These allan heads have a way of being very "Sticky" when they've been "set" in place for even a short time, I suspect from the fact that they are dis-similar metals, may have some corrosion present, have a lack of anti-sieze lubricant or were just plain "over-tight" to begin with.
They are VERY prone to being rounded out & difficult to remove. The heads are shallow and seem to be all too soft.
1st: you need to get in there with a little "picky" tool and clean the dirt & grit out of the recess to get the allen tool into the head full depth. Every time.
2ond you need good quality allen wench tools, I use "Snap-On". Craftsmen seem marginally good as well, but not H.F.
3rd A socket type allen drive will give you the best chance of keeping the driver at a perfect perpendicular angle to the attachment surface so as to try to avoid the wrench "leaning over" to one side as you apply force, thus rounding out the hex (provided you have the room to get it in there.
I use 3/8" drive. You might want to have a 1/2" drive 10mm one, but I use a 3/8" to 1/2" adaptor if I need the heavy artillery.
The swivel tools mentioned by Crazy above look like a great option. I'm definitely gonna get a set of these You need multiple styles of the tool for different apps.
NOW HERE'S THE DICEY PART! (Please don't kill me on this guys.......it really works).
Your best chance for getting out the tight stubborn ones (but you never know which ones those are bound to be till you try).............It to have some force on the fastener that has "POP" to crack the original bind between the to surfaces loose. Even though this sounds dramatic, and many will probably give me the.......................................................... .........."Oh, No.....never, Ever do that"!!!! ............................... replies, I use a 3/8" drive air impact wench with a socket adaptor, wherever possible, on the ones that I've never had out before. Similar to the advice you'll find that says to "tap" the socket drive adaptor with a hammer to shock loose the bolt, before trying to remove it., the impact gives the bolt a good "POP" force to kind of spring it loose at the outset.
Contrary to what you may hear, it does not cause the head to round out if it's deeply and firmly seated in the bolt and held dead straight.
I can only say, you'll have to try it and I'm prepared for others to SCREAM Oh no..........so as I said, take my advice with some caution and learn along the way what works in your shop.
If you round it out while properly using a small air impact wench, it probably wasn't salvageable to begin with.
As a side note, for the future, when reassembling......inspect & discard any bolts that have partially rounded out heads. Use a good quality Anti Size lubricant when going back together (I like a product called "Nickel -Silver" if you can find it and,,,, last be very conservative on re-tightening. In most cases, less is better. These things have a good chance of staying tight and seldom fall out. Conversely, they also seem to "Stick" tight and be difficult to remove.
The last bit of advice that others may also recommend is for when you have one that seems already hopelessly rounded out & damaged>>>>>
Often times a Torx (star) type socket driver that is slightly too large, can be driven into the damaged head recess with a hammer thus forming a new, solid "one-time-use" gripping surface to extract the damaged bolt. Again, once the Torx driver is firmly driven in & planted straight, I use the impact to shock the bolt loose. Because you are not "leaning sideways" on an L handle tool, everything works out better.
Try this in some area where you'll be confident you have room to drill out if needed (LAST resort). I think you'll be pleasantly surprised on how well it works to remove the tight ones & easy.
Do not tighten with power tools. Use the torque wrench and be conservative on to the lower end of the spec.
Please Let me know what you discover.
Regards, ibj....

I'll echo much of what's been said about Allen keys and hex-head screws. There is one advantage of Allen screws over Torx and Star-Key types and that's the fact that a ball-end Allen-key will allow you to get at awkwardly placed ones.

I've also often turned to an over-sized Torx-key hammered into a rounded Allen screw cap to free it.

As for the size of the drive, I've increasingly found that smaller is better for most things on a bike. I rarely use a ½ inch driver these days other than on large bolts/screws with a high torque value. Even a 3/8 drive is often too much and I probably use a ¼ inch drive as much, especially on the small stuff.

The usual Allen-key, a right-angled bar, is too hit-and-miss to trust. Fine for the tool roll as an occasional/emergency use but not much else.

One set of keys I have are T-handle with a ball-end. Apart from the ability to get at screws from an angle, the ball-end will often hold the screw on the tool while you start the thread.



One of these combination sets:



is very useful (and not expensive).

It has half-inch and 3/8ths adaptors and is much cheaper than buying socket keys in all the sizes needed.

It has other benefits too. All the keys are 10mm so you can slip a ring spanner on the shaft to get a good turning force on them if needed:



I often use a "speed" ratchet (¼ or larger):



Again, quite cheap. They do make those long screws where you are constantly having to remove the Allen-key every quarter turn because there's not enough room less tedious to deal with.



If more turning force is required, you can slip a 10mm ring spanner onto it:



I don't buy top quality stuff because I don't earn a living using my tools. The higher-end DIY/amateur stuff is good enough for me.

The internet has made buying individual tools much easier than it was. The days of buying combination sets and only ever using half of them is over for me. That said, I do have two of most things because in the past when I needed one size of tool on one end of a fixing and found that I needed another one on the other end, resorting to the "bodger's favourite" (adjustable spanner) usually ended in tears.

I'm (often rightly) accused of being anal because I keep my tools like this:





My excuse is that I can find what I need and more importantly I can tell if anything is missing and with the smaller tools I don't want anything left inside whatever I've been working on. Well that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Mike,

You have the set up that I want to have! I keep looking at tool chests to store all my tools in but haven't made the plunge yet, partly cause I would need 2 chests, 1 in work and 1 at home as my tools tend to be split between the two as I tend to work on bike/cars at both locations. always seems I have the tool I want at the wrong location!

They're mainly Halfords Pro ones I picked-up when they had deals going. I've got one Snap-on chest and a Sealey "hang-on" side cabinet. Like my tools, they are good enough for a DIY bodger like me.

I used up all the old timber that was kicking around in here when I moved in and built my bench around them:



Then used some off-cuts of MDF to face it:

I like the tool set. Mine are all really old and therefore most imperial. But with an upgrade here and there they'll be usable.

I have a set of Kinchrome allen wrenches and had to put a 4 foot piece of pipe on the 10mm one a few weeks ago and the plug came out and the wrench survived intact and normal shape. It was apparently put in that tight because the washer wasn't renewed or it may have been the bolt that held the roof on.

Good morning all: I just have to throw this in, anti-sieze and torque wrenches don't mix. In my opinion things will get over tightened. I am a believer of anti-sieze, but be carefull trying to reach full torque specs. in certain places. Just my two cents.

Its 40 years since I started my apprenticeship as a fitter and in all that time I have used loctite antisieze on the thread and under the head of the bolt on and bolt or stud/nut that needed to be torqued to specific tension and not once have I had a thread fail because I used it.
To add a bit more we were shown as apprentices how important it is to use the stuff
We torqued a cylinder head bolt to 65ft/lb with dry thread and dry under the bolt/nut, we got 1 ton psi (per square inch) on the gasket we then did the same and put engine oil on the thread and got 1.7 ton psi then never seize/ antisieze and got 4.1 ton psi then put neversieze/antisieze under the bolthead/nut and got 4.9 ton psi as you can see there are huge advantages to using those compounds and one other advantage is that by the time you reach full tension the compound has gone from between the part of the bolt and thread that takes the pressure where as with oil/grease there is 1-2 molecules thickness still present which under some circumstances like using soft steel or copper gaskets the oil/grease can squeeze out releasing some of the tension, not a great deal but between 2-5% which is significant with a purely metalic gasket.

Can you enlighten me as to why you believe it should not be used.

I agree 100% with Rick (unusual?......LOL),
Torque specs are generally calibrated for "clean & lightly oiled" threads.
That said............You will note in earlier posts, that experience has told us that BMW specs have been found to be a bit "excessive"......occasionally tending to strip out the thread just as Maximum torques are achieved.
Sometimes it may be a case of the "30 year old" aluminum castings tend to deteriorate in quality from environmental conditions.

The last bit of advice that others may also recommend is for when you have one that seems already hopelessly rounded out & damaged>>>>>
Often times a Torx (star) type socket driver that is slightly too large, can be driven into the damaged head recess with a hammer thus forming a new, solid "one-time-use" gripping surface to extract the damaged bolt. Again, once the Torx driver is firmly driven in & planted straight, I use the impact to shock the bolt loose. Because you are not "leaning sideways" on an L handle tool, everything works out better.
Try this in some area where you'll be confident you have room to drill out if needed (LAST resort). I think you'll be pleasantly surprised on how well it works to remove the tight ones & easy.
Do not tighten with power tools. Use the torque wrench and be conservative on to the lower end of the spec.
Please Let me know what you discover.
Regards, ibj....[/quote]

Just to add another method to the last hope and lost cause allen headed cap screws. Use a pin punch of diameter larger than the troublesome allen head. Hold pin punch flat on allen head and give ample thwack with heavy engineers hammer. This does 2 things

1 as before explained it loosens bolt in thread. and

2. It flattens the top of the allen head so as to tighten the rounded out, flogged out grip on your allen key.

Sometimes you have difficulty getting allen key back into allen head, just use said hammer to smack back in.

thats my 2c worth, Mike

Used the torx trick many a time myself but dont do it on the clutch bolts because you will more than likely break the clutch carrier which is injection moulded aluminium and has no support to take the shock.

Stick the blade of a small screw driver between one face of the allen key and the bolt head.
Also works if the allen key you have is one mm too small. Then go buy new bolts.