July 22nd, 2008 by R.J.

In order to participate in track days or races on your bike, your bike must be tech inspected. One of the things the inspectors are going to be looking for is to make sure your oil drain bolt is properly safety wired.

Even if you don’t ever intend to race at all; safety wiring your oil drain bolt is very cheap insurance. A loose oil drain bolt has been known to cause some pretty horrific crashes when it starts spewing oil right in front of your rear tire.

Today I’m going to show you how to drill and safety wire this bolt without using a drill press. Because who really has a drill press? Right. Let’s get started.

Tools Needed:
Vise
Hand Drill
1/16″ Metal Drill Bit(s)
Safety Goggles

This procedure is best performed when you are doing an oil change on your bike, as you will obviously need to drain your oil out to remove the bolt from your bike.

Every brand of motorcycle is different, so I’m not going to go into how to remove your fairings and make your oil drain bolt accessible. We’re going to assume you already have the bolt off your bike and are ready to drill it.

With the bolt removed from the bike, you must secure it with a vise. Secure it so that the side of the bolt where you want the hole started is facing you.

Next, please put on your safety goggles. Drilling metal produces metal shavings which can cause tremendous eye problems. I highly recommend you use protective eye-wear during this entire procedure.

Now use a center punch and hammer to pound a indentation into the side of the bolt’s head (see photo below). This step is necessary so that your drill bit doesn’t slide all over the surface as it tries to make a hole.

We are using a hand drill to drill the holes, as that’s what most of you are going to have in your garage. You will want to purchase some 1/16″ Metal Drill bits. Depending on how careful you are, you may need more than one as they break fairly easily.

You want to start your hole off at a 90 degree angle relative to the bolt head.

Don’t drill too deep. Before long, you want to change the angle you are drilling at so the bit will work it’s way through the top of the bolt head. See photo below for clarification:

It’s hard to tell from the photo below, but you want to keep the head of the oil pan bolt and the drill bit lubricated while drilling. When you drill metal, the bit (and bolt) will heat up tremendously. Keeping the bit cool will prolong the life of the bit and will keep it from snapping. I used a few squirts of WD-40 to lubricate and cool the bolt while I was drilling.

Soon enough your bit will work itself through the top of the bolt’s head.

Now, you can either stop here, or, you can do as I did and drill another hole on the opposite side. You never know how the bolt is going to align itself when installed back on the bike, so with two holes you have a much better chance of being able to secure the bolt properly.

In the end you will have something like this:

That’s pretty much all there is to it. Depending on the bike, you will now be able to fasten the bolt to other bolts in the same vicinity, the frame, or even the oil pan itself.