First off, thanks for all of the friendly and helpful advice! I finally got this one fixed, with the exception of putting the fairing back on.. waiting on expoxy to completely harden. Here are some pics and what happened along the way.. Enjoy!
Right fairing and bolt hole containing broken bolt:
Fairing removed (close up of broken off bolt)
Drilling out the middle of the bolt (This part was easy)
After drilling, I tried a craftsman screw out. As you can see from the above picture, I probably used too small of a bit and screw out. I think a larger one may not have snapped, cant be certain.. I know this one did and it was a PIA to get out. Left me with a 3/8 inch hole in the frame. I threaded this hole to add some surface area for expoxy later on..
Picture of new hole in frame:
Picked up a 3/8" aluminum rod from Loewes for 5 bucks on my way home from work:
Took me 2 tries to get this right. First try, I cut the rod to length prior to Drilling and Tapping the threads. This was really dumb since aluminum (especially once thinned out from drilling) distorts under the pressure of vice grips, etc.. Prototype 2 started out longer, drilled hole far beyond the length needed and then tapped out, no pressure from vice in business area.
Here is a picture of the finished aluminum insert and bolt from left side. I used this bolt after tapping the insert to hold the shape of the insert during a little grinding to offer some surface area for metal epoxy to adhere to. Not real pretty on the outside, but you will never see it again!
BTW.. Anyone who says tapping aluminum is easy has never tried it with a 12 dollar hand tapping set from harbor freight. Its very easy to cut out your threads if you do not apply sufficient force throughout each painstaking turn..
Next, I "kneaded" up some metal epoxy and carefully wrapped it thinly around my insert, which already fit pretty tightly in the frame. I left the bolt in the insert and carefully tapped the insert into the frame until it was flush mounted. Wiped off excess epoxy. I dont think its going anywhere, even without the epoxy the thing is very tight and need to be talked in. This is why I grinded down some areas of the insert to allow epoxy to get a bite and keep it from moving ever.
Here it is set into the frame:
And here is the left side fairing bolt screwed into the newly fabricated sleeve. Now all that is left is installing the fairing and obtaining a new screw for the right side. I suspect that I may have a slight alignment issue when installing the fairing and positioning the screw, but very minimal and certainly manageable.
Thanks again for all the suggestions and support, you guys are great! I hope that my experience may help someone somewhere down the road.
Kevin
