Baystate Jeepers

Quick thanks to Ryan for helping me with my adjustable track bahs today. What I thought would take 2 hrs, took almost 5, thanks to the FROZEN hw in back. To finally get the frame side off (after repeated heating and hammering with a 1000 ft/lb impact gun) Ryan had to heat the nut to the point where it was starting to melt. No exaggeration. Then it finally broke loose with the impact wrench. And on the axle end, he had to eventually plasma both ends off, as the bolt (and sleeve) were both spinning

It's pretty cool that he stayed with it. I was ready to throw the towel in a few times but Ryan wouldn't call it quits. Reassembly was all downhill

Oh yeah - OMG what the hell is it with Jeep and Torx bits???

Torx bolts were a creation of Evil and tool factories to put us shadetree mechanics in pergetory.
Hence the rule of "If you have exorcised a Torx bolt, you must replace it with a Hex head bolt."!!!!!!!!!!!

Whats with the one Torx bolt found in the drivers seat ?????? weird place for just one. FjR68

no prob carl! glad we could get it done. that's what 10+ years of rust and no anti-seize looks like! thanks for your help today, finally got the rear end buttoned up.

I'm surprised you couldn't snap the bolts off with the impact gun, or a breaker + cheater bar... That is the other way I've done it in the past...

I might have been able to on the axle end, but then there would have been a nut inside the axle mount with no way to get it off. on the frame end the nut came right off but the bolt was seized to sleeve and spinning freely with no way to grip the sleeve inside the rubber bushing. besides, the plasma took 2 minutes

Baseshakers wrote:I might have been able to on the axle end, but then there would have been a nut inside the axle mount with no way to get it off. on the frame end the nut came right off but the bolt was seized to sleeve and spinning freely with no way to grip the sleeve inside the rubber bushing. besides, the plasma took 2 minutes

Seems like it would have been easier to throw away those rusty old axles and just get new ones...

JW

Carl McFly wrote:Ryan had to heat the nut to the point where it was starting to melt.

What did you guys use for a heat source?

my POS $60 HD torch. I tried running it lean on O2 for a while but it wouldn't get hot enough, so i finally opened up the O2 all the way until it was a cutting flame and was able to melt the nut.