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Originally Posted by Wabbiteer
The steel in the screws has been hardened - you will need a tiny Cobalt alloy drill bit to make pilot hole where you need one to be, then another cobalt drill to enlarge it to get a tap in. I've drilled Stainless Steel with a 2 "AA" cell 60rpm $4 screwdriver before (standing on tiptoes on roof to reach chimney flue liner & cap 40' off ground) so I know it has nothing to do with the drill, just the drill bit. Break the EZ-out off and I disclaim any advice was ever offered 
You can also try a little percussion on it to relax the bite the corrosion has on the aluminum, straight on and 45° taps with a punch. Even if you don't see anything it will have weakend the rust weld bond or moved some aluminum.
I believe that is one job on mine that I simply cut the heads off flush and tore off the wrap utterly convinced notching the new wrap there & plenty of Vulkem will be the way it gets reinstalled... |
I know what you mean about the possibility of breaking off an ez-out. I've done that before. The ez out would be very small in this case and thus easy to break. And these screws are "welded" in tight. So I've got to be very careful, using the percussion and drilling techniques, or maybe, as you suggest, I polish off the grinding a bit more and let the sleeping screw-dog lie... I'll try smaller drill bits. You can see the drilling tending to wander over into the aluminum a bit in one of the photos before I decided to stop.
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Todd
“Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails, explore, dream, discover, and change habits.”
- Mark Twain