Gilly,

Here's my situation.

My driver's side catalytic converter has a hairline crack right in the middle of a weld bead on its top. My plan is to remove it from the manifold and take to a friend of mine so he can TIG weld it. I see no reason why it can'nt be repaired. I hope I'm right as this part is very expensive.

I'm not going to have the dealer here do any work on the vehicle so I'm on my own. I let them do the warrenty work on it when it was under warranty but that's it. Sadly I can'nt even buy parts from them as they charge way way more than any other source I've used. They always charge over MSRP. They will not cover this problem since vehicle has 93K miles and the warranty on this item is 8 years or 80K miles whichever comes first.

If I need to buy that special tool I could probably get it from Baum Tools; but I'm thinking I wouldn't be able to have enough room to get it in postion to use it, especially on the bolt on the opposite side of the one in the photo.

My square nut is not messed up or spinning. I have waited to see what I could find out before applying to much torque to the head of the bolt. I think if I try to turn the bolt head I will probably break it.

What would be wrong with just using a bolt and a regular nut with a washer under it instead of the set-up with the swaged square nut. I bet that swaged nut is install to the manifold before the manifold and exhaust system is installed on the engine.