Shimano MW80 shoes. Excellent, on my second pair.

Old cleats properly welded on – no amount of soaking in penetrating fluid would shift them. Ended up drilling them off with the intention of replacing the cleat plate inside too. No issue there…

Except there’s no access to the cleat plate from the inside. Dammit. Should have checked before, though I’m sure I did this to a previous pair… never mind.

So, the cleat plate has a second set of holes I can probably use, but I’m left with the remains of two bolts sticking up that foul the new cleat.

Suggestions to remove the bolt remains please. Bonus marks if you can do it without insinuating that I’m an idiot!! Don’t have a lot of specialist tools to hand…

Got a drill? Clamp the chuck onto the remnants.

Edit. Of course you have a drill…

Not a bad shout. Though the bolts wouldn’t shift before… Will give it a go. Ta!

Can you spin the cleat plate around? I have vague memories of being able to do this on my mw80s. You’ll still only have 1 cleat position but at least it’ll be the right one.

I had EXACTLY the same issue with exactly the same pair of shoes…

In fact.. this week I’m just about to drill/dremmel off the RIGHT sided cleat as that won’t shift now!

I did what you’ve done – drill off the bolt head, but then use a dremmel and cutting/grinding bit to really wear down the remaining bit of bolt.
THankfully, my cleat was pretty central, so I could just slide the plate from one ‘end’ to the other, and the new cleat is in the same position.

Basically, get a dremmel to grind back the remaining bolt.

DrP

Superficial – I think I maybe can – I can actually shove the plate forward and use the unused holes, but the issue is the remains of the bolts fouling the new cleat.

DrP – haha – glad it’s not just me! Dremel is a good shout – will locate on and give it a go.

Thanks all!

Dremel / die grinder / grinding stone in drill. Depending how hard the bolts are it won’t be fast! Make sure to have a bucket of water to keep dunking the shoe in as you don’t want to melt the sole!

Definitely a Dremel…

Keep meaning to retire my old MW80’s, but despite now coming up to 10 years old, they just won’t die! I even bought their replacements 2 years ago in anticipation of them finally ceasing to be waterproof and warm (or falling apart) but they’re still going!

The current cleats are pretty worn out though which might ironically kill the shoes, as I CBA with all the faff if I’ve got a new pair sat waiting to use. 😆

is now a good time to point out that as part of my post ride protocol I back the bolts off on my cleats. It takes, ohh, 20 seconds, and while 20s here and 20s there all probably adds up to more in the end, I’ve never* had to spend hours drilling the cleats off my shoes and potentially wrecking a £150 pair of boots in the meantime.

* OK, i did, once, which is now why i back the bolts off after every ride.

To late to be of any use this time as you’ve already done the damage, but I cut the CLEAT off and leave the bolts intact. Then get the molgrips out, bit of oil/spray and job done.

New cleat bolts always get greased as they go in