Okay, a little background. Last weekend I took my car to a local place to have the alignment checked out and if it's not too expensive to put my replacement y-pipe on (they'll only warranty the labor of course but with the car being from up north I didn't want to fool with the possibility of broken bolts) Anyways, the guy tells me that he can't do the exhaust y-pipe for fear of breaking most if not all of the bolts in the exhaust flanges. He said they could do it but just to be safe they'd quote me 350 bucks (5 hours labor) which would include removing the old pipe, drilling/tapping any broken bolts and putting the new one on.
Me being uber cheap and feeling confident that I've worked on things that came from much harsher environments (if you've ever had to work on a machine from a waste processing plant, the chemicals they use there to break down all the 'crap' (literally) just tears at a machine, corrodes metal, destroys wiring, etc. Anyways, I said no thanks and he assured me that I'd break half the bolts if I just went home and tried to work 'wrench them off' he said.
Well, I don't wrench anything off unless I know it's easy to work with, that's what an air compressor and impact wrench are for. Okay, a little fast forward, I've been spraying PB Blaster on stuff a few times this week just to get it ready for when I go to work on it. I started tonight after spraying some PB on earlier. No budges, nothing wanted to work free. What I did manage to do was round one of the exhaust nuts
which truely pissed me off. Anyways, I decided to find out if I can get any manifold studs because I know I was going to need at least one. After ordering a pair from O'Reilys (I'm going to check the dealership in the morning) I was at AZ to get a 14mm short socket that I could tear up if need be. :Okay, to the point of the thread now:
While there, I noticed a product called "Freeze-Off" for like 5 bucks. I've read about it before, supposedly it lowers the temp of the area sprayed which leads to cracking then the penetrant can get in better. So, I bought a can and went back home. I went ahead and did as exactly stated on the can (spray directly at area for 20-30 seconds, then wait a couple of minutes, repeat if necessary). The first 2 bolts (at the catalytic converter) Came off without much hassle (big surprise). Then like magic the 3 unstripped exhaust flange nuts came off pretty easily (really surprised now). Well, then that left me about 2 hours to struggle and drill out the stud attached to the rounded nut (it was in the front and I couldn't get my nut splitter in a good spot to do anything). So, for roughly 3 hours of my time and 5 bucks for freeze-off I saved $350.00. Not bad for a Friday night. Tomorrow I'll tackle retapping the ex. flange and set to do a few more things underneath the car.
Just wanted to tell my story and recommend Freeze-off to anyone who's having issues like I listed above.
Ever heard of/used Freeze-Off???
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