busted tubular crossmember bolt

b9folk_old · April 19, 2007 at 3:25 PM

Has anyone broken off one of the bolts for the tubular crossmember and come up with a decent way to deal with it? I wasn't going to remove mine, but it was in the way of the lower control arm bolts. I don't know if I can just drill it out from underneath, or if I need to cut an opening in the frame rail to get at it. At least I finally got the entire front suspension off!

Lyle

C6ZZKGT · April 19, 2007 at 3:35 PM Official Post

Lyle,

If you have not spun the nut in the frame, you can drill the bolt out carefully and retap the nut. The process of drilling it out in stages will sometimes break the bolt loose. The bolt does not bottom out as you can see by looking at the other side where you already have the bolt out.

-Fred-

65Rangoon_old · April 19, 2007 at 3:45 PM

<font face='Comic Sans MS'>To break a bolt that size must mean the term 'frozen' has taken on a new dimension.

Me thinks I'd entertain drilling it to accept a large easy-out. But I'd heat the bolt stub cheery red before trying to do the easy-out trick.

I'm not to sure a hole in the frame would give that much clear access to deal with it. But if you use the blue flame wrench to preheat, and huge visegrips to twist the bolt, that might work. And, I'd 'tighten' the bolt rather than try to back it out (fewer threads to deal with). </font id='Comic Sans MS'>

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b9folk_old · April 19, 2007 at 6:08 PM

You'd think it would take gorilla strength to break it, but here's what happened. I did have to use a long (about 3') pipe on a 1/2" drive socket wrench to initially break them loose. But after that I was only using the socket wrench (about 1' long) and not having much trouble. The driver's side bolt creaked a little when I got halfway out, but it came out. The passenger's side one seized and broke when I was halfway out. I stopped a couple of times to squirt WD40 on the exposed hole & threads, backing up slightly then continuing onward.

On the rest of the entire front suspension, only the spring perch nuts have broken on me. I also broke the bolts on one bumper arm, the other side having been replaced a decade ago.

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