Mike Hartwell ad creative
Mike Hartwell
Mike Hartwell

Inactive· since Jun 1, 2026

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Last September a Land Rover specialist in Skipton quoted me £540 to extract two EGR valve mounting bolts on the back of the inlet manifold of my Td5. Three weeks later I'd pulled them myself with a £52 spanner I'd read about in a workshop column in Land Rover Owner magazine. My name is Mike Hartwell. I'm fifty-four. I run a small fencing-and-groundworks contract outside Skipton in the Yorkshire Dales. The truck is a 2006 Land Rover Defender 110 Td5 in Stornoway Grey with 287,000 miles on the original engine. I've owned her since 2009. I have been a paid-up member of the Land Rover Series One Club since 1991 and the Defender Owners Club since 2003. I subscribe to Land Rover Owner, Land Rover Monthly, and Classic Land Rover and I read all three cover to cover every month. I have copies of the Brooklands Defender Td5 Workshop Manual and the Bell Engineering Td5 Diagnostic Handbook on the workbench shelf next to dad's old BL Solihull 25-Year service pin from the Lode Lane line. I have known about the Td5 EGR valve failure mode since the first one started weeping on my engine in 2017. What I did not know until September of this year was that there was a tool that pulls the two rear EGR mounting bolts without removing the inlet manifold. The Td5 EGR valve sits on the back of the inlet manifold, against the bulkhead, with the EGR cooler bolted on behind it and the coolant return line crossing the top. Four bolts hold the valve. Two on the front you can reach. Two on the back, between the valve body and the bulkhead, with about half an inch of clearance and the coolant line in the way. Every Td5 owner who has EGR-deleted his engine has faced these bolts. The factory service manual tells you to remove the inlet plenum to access them. Every Land Rover specialist in the country quotes the plenum-off labour to do the job. In the August '25 issue of Land Rover Owner there was a workshop column by a chap named Ade from Hereford. He'd written a 1400-word feature on what he called "the BoltHero" — an offset spanner with an internal roller chain that transferred torque through the offset angle without flexing. He described EGR-deleting a Td5 in his Hereford workshop on a Tuesday afternoon without removing the inlet plenum, using the BoltHero to back the two rear EGR mounting bolts out clean. He included photos of the bar in section, showing the chain inside. He listed seven other offset spanners he'd tried over fifteen years on Td5 EGR work — Sealey, Britool, Draper, Halfords Professional, a Snap-on flex-head, a Mac stubby, and a chap-from-Worcester forum-classified job. None of them had done what the BoltHero did. The BoltHero was, in his words, "the first offset spanner that does what every offset spanner has been advertised to do for forty years." I read the column on a Wednesday evening in front of the wood-burner with Karen. I ordered the spanner the next morning. £52 plus free postage to my Skipton address. It arrived the following Tuesday in a small brown postal box from a depot in the Midlands. The following Saturday morning I went out to the shop at half-six. Karen brought a tea out around eight. Radio Yorkshire 95.3 on the bench. The Td5 had been parked half-stripped since I'd given up on the EGR job in July. I set the chain-drive head of the BoltHero on the first rear EGR bolt. Cinched the socket. Set the offset to clear the coolant line. Steady pressure on the handle. The bolt moved on the first pull. Out clean in three minutes. The second rear bolt came out the same way. The blanking plate went on. The EGR cooler bypass loop went on. The inlet plenum I had never had to remove was already back on. Tea was still warm when I sat back down on the workbench stool. That was nine months ago. I have used the BoltHero fifty-two times since. I have pulled the three rear exhaust manifold studs on a mate's Td5 in his lock-up outside Settle. I have pulled both starter motor bolts behind the bell housing on Karen's brother's Discovery 2 in Bradford. I have pulled six swivel ball housing bolts on a chap-from-Grassington's Defender 90 — he was a retired farmer whose pension wouldn't take what the Skipton specialist had quoted him. I have pulled four rear chassis cross-member bolts on my own truck when I had Devon 4x4 send up a new cross-member last winter and the £480 Skipton quote for fitting was, with respect, taking the mick. I have pulled three gearbox cross-member bolts on a Defender 90 in the YDH Auction Mart car park in the lambing-week downpour of April. The spanner sits on top of my Snap-on chest in the shop next to dad's pin and the Brooklands manual. Karen calls it "the orange one." I have told her the chain-inside story approximately fifty times. She has stopped pretending to listen but she does smile every time. Ade's column in Land Rover Owner saved me £540 in September. The BoltHero website does not advertise in Land Rover Monthly or Land Rover Owner or Classic Land Rover. They sell direct. £52. If you have a Defender Td5, a Defender 300Tdi, a Discovery 2, or any Land Rover product built between '94 and 2016 and you have ever faced an EGR delete or a manifold stud extraction job — order it. If you haven't got one already in your toolbox you have been paying the specialist for inlet plenum labour you didn't need. The spec sheet says it works on any bolt or stud with a square drive accessible to the offset head, up to M12 thread, regardless of head condition. In my fifty-two uses it has worked on every bolt I've put it to. Ade said the same in his column. The chap from the Defender Owners Club Yorkshire branch who I spoke to at the September meet at the Settle Town Hall said the same. £52. Order direct. getbolthero.com

I almost paid £540 to extract two EGR bolts on my Td5. 👆🏼

BoltHero is the offset extension wrench that reaches bolts buried deep in tight spaces — no swing arc needed. 39cm long, 1.6cm thin, chain-driven. Works with your existing sockets. 100-day money back guarantee.

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