Getting cleats out of shoes

I’ve got some old shimano spd r pedals and want to change the cleats on the shoes. Unfortunately I’ve rounded the slot for the allen keys and can’t get any purchase on them to get the screws out.

Any good ideas how to get them out as don’t want to have to throw the shoes away. ;0(

Drill out the bolt heads?

This ^^^. Or maybe try and bash in a screwdriver that’s a little bigger than the bolt hole and see if you can get it to turn.

You could try dremelling a slot into the head. Or just save time and go straight to plan b and drill into the heads with a drill bit about the same size as the shaft of the bolt. Once through the head’ll fall off, you can take the cleat off, and then remove the remains of the bolt with molgrips.

And then do what I do and loosen the bolts after every ride. Takes about 20s and prevents this happening.

As above, drill the bolts and I heated the left overs with a turbo torch and pliers unscrewed out. Alternative, you drill out, fish in the shoe for the spd plate, remove and heat up or soak in penetrating fluid and remove.

I had good success with a reverse thread extracting drill bit in this situation. Like these:

(nearly broke my wrist as I wasn’t prepared for it to “bite”, but that’s my own stupidity!)