Broke bolt off in head when I was installing a new valve cover

[highbrowed]

Wanted to put this here in case someone had the same issue in the future..

Long story short, I broke a bolt off flush in the head when replacing my valve cover because I overtorqued it. I had the stereo up too loud and didn't hear the click of my torque wrench (it's a very light click when tightening to only 7ft lbs). I was about to start drilling it out when I got a different thought.

What I ended up doing was sharpening an old screwdriver (was my grandpas, pretty sure it's hardened steel) with a file until it was super sharp. I then put it on the back of the stud, and hit it solidly with a ball peen hammer about 15-20 times, which made an indention similar to a flathead screw. This allowed me to unscrew the broken stud in about 5 seconds. No drilling required. What a relief.

Lesson learned. I'll turn the music down when torquing bolts next time..

[wu2x]

Clever. I broke a bolt when torquing as well and ended up drilling it out. What made it even more painful was that I was just double-checking each bolt to make sure I had everything torqued down, which meant I had to remove everything *again* just to get access to it.

[ShocknAwe]

Happens to all of us. Glad yours was an easy free fix!