Best of luck with the nasty bolts

 

dont use a torque wrench to break bolts loose! to my understanding, it damages the wrench. invest in the longest breaker bar you can buy.

 

Yeah that's what I did

 

for a hammer and a punch to work, you gotta use a cutoff wheel to make a slice into the side of the bolt head, and then jam the punch into the slot and hammer it out(works better with a chisel of some sort). to get that one out, i did what you are talking about. i used a 6" extension, a 1/2" ballsbuster breakerbar, and then some fence post i had left over. gotta get really really good leverage on it, too. good luck

 

I was able to clear the fender with the extension, 17" breaker bar and fence post I got but couldn't get it off. I tried hammer, I tried candle wax after torch heat repeated several times, it has been soaked overnight in liters of penetrating oil, nothing. I couldn't go really hardcore on the bars cause it would lean on the brake disc and I really didn't like it.

I thought I'd just put the other bolts back and drive the car to a mechanic, but I can't put the bushing bolt back cause the bushing is not aligned anymore, and the other bolt that goes to the frame wont go back in either, it doesn't seem to find it's threads, tried driving it in with a drill but wasn't able to, I supported the control arm with the jack to align everything perfectly but wasn't able to put it back. Annoyingly enough, the bushing bolt is the same size but longer and goes in perfectly. The bolt threads are not stripped because I can twist the little bushing fastener on the frame bolt without any problem. This boggles the mind. The balljoints bolts are screwed back in though.

Lesson #1 learned today : do NOT remove ANY fastener before you succesfully loosen up ALL of them. No really, DON'T. If you crap out, you just screw 'em back in and get some help.

Car still sitting on the jackstands tonight, I think I'll have to get it moved to a garage but I don't like the idea of having it towed with a half fastened control arm.

Effing hell. Thanks for the help though. I might remove the brake disc tomorrow to try the breaker bar and fence post again. Still can't believe it...


EDIT : The picture made me laugh really hard, exactly how I felt

 

Can you drill it out? Looks like a decent angle.

 

How about applying heat using a torch to the engine cradle near the bolt? (not the bolt itself) Maybe somebody used some loctite on them or they are rusted big time? Try some PB blaster if you haven't already. Works better than WD-40 IMHO.

dave mc

 

Just a thought.

Is there a nut on the backside or just a bolt going into the frame? If theres a nut on the backside, you want to loosen it, not the bolt.


P.S. If force doesn't work, your not using enough of it. :lol:

 

There's no nut, it's a plain bolt. I don't think PB Blaster is available in Canada.

 

when you are applying heat, i assumed you arent heating the bolt itself. heat makes metal expand, so you need to heat what the bolt is going through and not the bolt itself. can you access the back side of the bolt?

 

Yeah I'm heating the engne cradle around the bolt to expand the engine cradle threads, not the bolt itself. My leverage wasn't the best I could manage to get I think. The flexing point of the breaker bar was not stable enough and would move around towards the brake disc, I will try to build a support for it out of my old floor jack.

The other side of the bolt is not visible and I don't have a proper drill. Otherwise this POS would've been gone a long time ago. All I have is an electric impact wrench and 240LB of torque is not enough.

 

P.S. If force doesn't work, your not using enough of it. :lol:

Check it out

A friend came over tonight to help me out with this, we used the jack as a support to get better leverage. I was pulling on the breaker bar to hold it on the jack while he was pulling the fence post down. It got it moving about a quarter on first try so we gave it another go and the head snapped off. I could now at least remove the old control arm to see the exposed part of the bolt so I lubed it up some more and snapped a vise grip on it. And it apparently stripped because I could turn it well but it wasn't coming out. I can now litterally wiggle the bolt with my fingers but it doesn't have a head anymore, and it's stripped. Or the engine cradle threads are stripped.:hammer: :disappoin

 

Man! what a b$tch that is! I hate when that kind of thing happens, and them you find yourself in deep sh$t. I wonder if a weld behind the bolt has broken off now because the bolt was totally seized in it? I'm assuming that maybe some sort of thread insert was welded to the cradle inside. That would explain how you can wiggle it. If you were able to shear the bolt head off of that, then it is definitely seized. That's a lot of torque for a bolt that size. Is there some sort of inspection hole underneath that you can at least use a small mirror with to inspect behind the bolt? Can you use a punch and a sledge hammer to try to punch the headless bolt back into the cradle frame? I don't know how else you can fix this except to replace the cradle, or have it repaired by having a hole drilled underneath for access to allow a new nut or thread insert welded back on and then the hole patched to return the structural integrity to the cradle frame?

It will be interwsting to see how this one gets solved. I wish you luck.

I just saw another suggestion for a similar problem to yours. If the interior nut weld is truly broken and you are able to punch the existing broken bolt out, another option is to find a long bolt of the same diameter and strength, and drill straight thru the cradle beam to the other side and slap a nut or two on there and torque it down. This is probably going to be your easiest solution besides breaking out a welder and doing major structural surgery. I think what I would personally do is to drill a hole underneath the cradle beam just big enough to insert a new nut into the back of the existing bolt hole with a lock washer. Drill the hole just big enough to slip the nut thru and no more. Epoxy the nut to a stiff piece of wire or something that you can use to guide it in maybe. THis will weaken the cradle beam a bit, but probably not a lot. If you are still concerned about it, you can always take the car in to someone later to get a small patch welded over it.

dave mc

 

dayum, that's a long ass breaker bar :lol:

at any rate, i wish you all of luck in getting this fixed!

 

Oh shit. Force worked to good.

Rusted and/or seized bolts are the worst. :cursin: Even worst when some dumbass decides to weld a homemade trailer hitch between the frame and bumper. Don't ask how I know.

I wonder if a weld behind the bolt has broken off now because the bolt was totally seized in it? I'm assuming that maybe some sort of thread insert was welded to the cradle inside. That would explain how you can wiggle it.

I agree with your thinking. I can't see how a bolt that big can just be threaded into the engine cradle.

 

if it was me, i would probably drill out the bolt and tap the hole.

 

I agree with your thinking. I can't see how a bolt that big can just be threaded into the engine cradle.

There is no nut, it is just screwed and torqued to the cradle, the other cradle bolt next to it was out in 5 minutes...

There's a hole but it's not aligned very well with the back of the bolt, and there's no patching apparent to the cradle behind the bolt so I really don't know wtf happened. I think I could easily grind the rest of the bolt and punch it in with a hammer and punch but it will bounce around in the cradle tube and will be annoying. I've had every possible problem with this thing, and now I'm in some deep ass shit. It started out so easy and good...

Thanks for the replies though.

 

Not sure how practical this is ..... Use vise grips to immobilize the existing bolt stub. Then drill out the center of the bolt stub, starting with a small drill size, maybe 1/8", and increasing in size. The center of the bolt will probably be 'softer' than the outer perimeter, and possibly allow a drill bit to penetrate. Just use plenty of cutting oil while drilling. .... After several increases in hole size, you should be able to crush the bolt and pull it out of the hole. .... Buy several good drill bits.

 

I'm definitely buying a drill, a lot of bits and a case of beer tomorrow. I took a day off at work to get this shit done or towed. I'm definitely going to do what dc_98_cam said and pull it out to figure out what the hell happened in there.

I strongly suspect that there is indeed a weld that broke inside the cradle and I'll have to crush it out this way. I just hope the broken weld thing will come through as well but it should since I have a pretty good idea of how the inside of the hole is made by looking through the other one that didn't cause me a problem. The neighbourhood parents might finally be able to unplug their kids ears this weekend.

 

Got the drill, drilled it out, the inside of the engine cradle is screwed, the threaded guide gave up and twisted inside. Big mess. Called towing guy, car fell off the jack stands because of his idiocy, one of my jack stand is done, so I cannot change the other arm myself, my left swaybar link is bent, and my CV boot is torn and grease is pissing out of it. The actual CV joint does not appear to be damaged because the wheel never really actually rolled but they're not sure if they will be paying for the damage because "normally, when we tow cars, they have all their wheels and control arms".

How we did : It was a flatbed truck, the front of my car was on jackstands, we jacked the back of the car up so we could slide the lowering bed of the truck underneath and lower the car back on it. All was good, back wheels on the bed, front still jacked up. Now we wanted to support the front left of the car with my floor jack, and slowly back it up the bed, but somehow he managed to pull back on the truck chains (don't ask me why, I didn't even have time to yell "WTF ARE YOU DOING") before the floor jack was placed and the car fell down. I was so pissed I didn't even think about taking pictures...

They torched a hole underneath the cradle to let the bolt and threaded guide out, and will weld another one in the frame, then patch the hole as some people here suggested.

 

Damn bro sorry for your bad luck. Keep us updated...

 

So I got my car back, didn't pay for the CV boot and the bent Sway bar link, didn't pay for towing either so I was at least happy about that. Handling is much better, and steering is way smoother too, but I'll have to check into inner tie-rods now cause I noticed some play in them on both side.

Here is the patched hole underneath the engine cradle, they got a piece of cradle from a junkyard and cut the threaded guide inside then we put the bolt on securely to align it and wielded it inside the craddle after cleaning up the remains of the old one. :

 

holy shit, never seen a breaker bar that big ... most guys i know just cut the damn thing at that point :lol:

:thumbup: props

 

Well it's a regular breaker bar, we just slid a fence post over it. This friend of mine's got an Xterra and their Nissan Truck club frequently meets at his place for backyard "Mod days" and this is the most popular Stubborn bolt killer. So effective if fucking killed my chances to fix this thing myself haha. Especially useful for suspention jobs on lifted trucks and stuff, but you have to be two guys.

 

glad to read its finally fixed. sorry about what a hassel it was.