I'm trying to take a pedal off of a bike, but the damn thing is so torqued on there I can't get it off.  The bolt is starting to get rounded off, so I am looking for some advice before I screw it up anymore.

There is a pedal still on it so I can't just whack on the next smallest size socket.  So far I have tried a wrench, vice grips, and just about everything else I can imagine.  I even broke the vice grips (Craftsman) just to give you an idea of how tight that thing is on there.

So how do you deal with these bolts?  Any special tools for the job?

So

The pedal stem may have a compound like Loc-Tite on it to keep it from coming loose... You can soften it by warming with a hi-heat gun or small torch.

If it still is too tight, and you don't care about saving the pedal, drill a hole perpindicular throught the stem, and use a long screwdriver or similar to twist it out.

If this still doesn't work, take it to a bike shop, and spend $5.

Doh! Garand Shooter is absolutley right: depending on which side the pedal is on, it will be reverse threaded!

Use a 6sided socket and not one of those ones with all the little splines inside it, the siz sided one actually grabs each side of the head and not the edges like the splined ones. they also won't round them off in the first place.

DOH!  I'm an idiot!  Garand Shooter had it right, the damn thing is left hand thread.  Thanks for the help.

Well, I don't know if I would say that just yet.  I probably friction welded the sucker on there.  It still might take an act of god to break it loose becuase I spent an hour and a half torquing the piss out of it.  But at least I know why now...

Hey, it could have been worse; gunsmiths used to occasionally embarrass themselves when trying to remove a barrel from the old Norwegian Krag-Jorgensen rifles – it too has a left hand thread.

If all else fails and you decide you’re willing to destroy the pedal to get it off - try the same trick that gunsmiths use when trying to remove a really stuck rifle barrel (in addition, of course, to turning it in the correct direction!!).  Take a hacksaw and cut a shallow groove around the entire circumference of the pedal shaft as close as possible to the strut that it’s screwed into.  This relieves the side pressure and makes it much easier to unscrew.  (I’m assuming the pedal doesn’t have a pipe thread – I don’t think it does.)  

Actually, you might not have to cut the entire circumference depending on how the strut and pedal shaft are joined up.  Also, a Dremel tool with a cut-off wheel or even a triangular file could probably be used in place of the hacksaw.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think you’ll have a problem finding a replacement pedal.  Wal-mart probably has them.  However, I’d locate a replacement pedal before gleefully destroying the old one.

Good luck!