stuborn bolt

[adiaw83]

I'm replacing my door check straps right now. Passenger side is finished with minimal problems. Drivers side now I have the pannel off the door now there is just one bolt holding the door check strap to the car and its stuborn as hell. how can I get it off?

[leathermang]

Is it a regular six sided bolt head ?

[adiaw83]

I think its six sided and I don't have a big assortment of tools to work with either.

[leathermang]

Are you worried about rounding it off... or just finding enough power to move it ? You got the other side off ok,,,? Greg

[adiaw83]

both the bolt is kind of in a reccessed part of the door and Its old so it is succeptable to rounding off.

[Capt Kirk]

wd40 or liquid wrench?

those have always worked for me.

[adiaw83]

I'm using WD-40 for it I'll just go back at it tommrow

[Capt Kirk]

Another thing if you're using crappy tools your going to have a problem with rounding of heads and things of that nature.

Go get your self a good set of Craftman wrenches and/or sockets and you won't have to worry as much with rounding off the head.

[leathermang]

There are some wrenches and sockets that do not have straight surfaces between the corners... Sears may have some also... seems I saw some there... they are designed to that pressure is placed more on the straight side of the bolt head as compared to near the corner... I am pretty sure Snap on has them also..... they can be a real treat for using on really stuck nuts and bolts. Often penetrating oils do not reach the threads you need them to... sometimes it is worth , on a vertical surface like you are dealing with, building a small dam with PlayDough,,, and filling it with penetrating oil and leaving it over night...Then on any stuck bolt... when you do get it moving ,,keep spraying P-oil until you get it all the way out... loosen it until it gets hard to turn,spray the threads you have exposed, tighten it again.. this way you carry some P-oil into the threads...and crush some of the rust.... Greg

CarolinaMBZ , in this next post, is referring to the fact that a 6 point socket is much less likely to round off a bolt head than a 12 point....

[CarolinaMBZ]

This can also make a significant difference on potential for rounding fasteners, but also of course is dependent on clearance issues for rotating tool.

[JimSmith]

The tools leathermang (Greg) refers to have the corners drilled out so there is no way to apply a load to the corner of the hex headed fasteners. I invested in a set of these when I started knocking the corners off my oil drain plug on the 190E 2.3-16. For some reason this car has a relatively long plug (about 3/4" of threaded length or more), and it used to get stuck quite often. The tools are much less prone to problems with stuck fasteners.

Good Luck, soak the area with penetrating fluids as you are, and use a good wrench. Jim

assuming you have the exactly correct socket, use a pipe to extend the leverage on the handle of the driver. there are many bolts on my can that I can't get enough leverage on without using an extension. Its amazing what a lever will do.

I haven't yet rounded one off. I have, in the past on other machines, broken the bolt completely off. Then must drill out and re-tap.....not as bad as it sounds.

Nic

[ATLD]

If you round the bolt off, you can do several things:


-use a cutoff saw and either cut off the head, or slot it (so you can use a big screwdriver to remove it).

-if you can fit a small pipewrench into the area (clearance?), its jaws create their own friction and do not require the six bolt faces to still be intact

-weld or glue a cheap socket (or the like) to the bolthead. Use a decent hardening epoxy, as the epoxy will fill in the spaces that the rounding destroyed.

-use a bolt extractor (drill a small appropriately sized hole in the bolt first) and use the reverse threaded extractor and wrench to remove the bolt. Be careful here, as if the bolt is really tight, you may crack off the extractor. Since the extractor are usually a harder metal than most/all common drill-bits, you are stuck.

-drill out the bolthead and threading with a sized drill-bit that is just slightly smaller than the hole threading. remove remaining metal with a pick or the like.

That's just about all I can think of at the moment. Good luck!

Adam
ATLD

[240 Ed]

Adam

What a super idea about glueing a socket on the bolt head!

You could use JBWeld for the epoxy, and I am sure this would be preferrable to breaking off an easy-out!

Also, if you have room for a manual impact tool, these are very handy!

[leathermang]

ED, I can see from your signature where you learned about the manual impact tool.... the only way to get some things off on those two wheelers...