Are the two 19mm nut and bolt attaching the knuckle to the strut supposed to be a PITA? I have a 400ftlb impact and its not doing a thing. There is no visible rust as she is a garage queen.

Any thoughts? I have a feeling these things are way over torqued.

 

no they should come off fairly easy, I've removed and torqued them in the past a few times whenever I thought it would make the job easier. it could be that they're over torqued, try using pb blaster or liquid wrench to help break it loose

 

also try using a wrench on the other side to stop it from possibly turnin the whole thing

 

I am an idiot, there is an ongoing thread about this same thing but the person is having issues with the bolt now that the nuts are off....

I have been soaking it all day in PB. I could try Kroil but I feel like most of the stuff works the same.

I think I may even try using the jack as someone suggested along with turning the steering wheel such that there is better access.

Thanks for the suggestions...... I do have a wrench on the other side just incase it turns but its not moving..

 

if you are trying to turn the bolt head on the TOP bolt then it won't ever turn until you shear it off. Make sure you're only attempting to do the nut side.

Worst case, get one of these:

 

I have tried both nuts... I think I just need more force and I think the jack and gravity will help.

Thanks for the input.

What are those things anyways? Will they shear off a nut?

 

nut splitters. You crank that knob on the right side of that picture and it will crack the nut off. I recommend a new bolt and nut if it comes to this since you'll jack the threads up for sure.

 

This just recently happened to me. I heated the bolt up, soaked it in pb balster and even used freeze off to break the bolts free. It took alot of breaker bar usage to ge the bolts off first. The bolts were a different story I hammered on those bolts for like 2 hours and nothing. Eventually i had to take somewhere to have them get the bolts outs, lube them up and put them back in.

 

Your air wrench may be doing way less than what it advertises. I had to replace mine a while back for the same reason. They get worn and the torque goes away.

 

Following up on this thread, I ended up getting all of the nut/bolts off. For the front, for which I created this thread, I ended up using leg-power and a breaker bar. The gun simply wasn't enough. Also, I am not sure if PB Blaster helped very much. I never tend to see direct results like some people claim when using pentrating oils such as PB, Kroil, etc.

Good point. I am actually considering taking this gun back considering it is brand new and I am slightly disappointed that it didn't help break these nuts loose. Sear's had this 400 ft lb max craftsman gun onsale for $69.99. I was looking at their heavy-duty version and a couple other well known brands but for the price I figured it was a good deal. I am now wondering if 400 ft. lbs is even sufficient for most of the applications that I will use it in. I probably will only find myself using this to break things loose.

However, I feel that the bolts were either over-torque or had some oxidation that led to a difficult removal. The thing is that the underbody is fairly clean from rust (garage queen + 24k miles). I think it was a combination.

For the rear driver side, I ended up using my leg/breaker bar for one of the bolts and a dead-blow hammer on the breaker to pop the other.

For the rear passenger side, I ended up needing to use the weight of the car with a breaker. These by far were the worst.

In the end, the passenger side (front and rear) were more difficult to remove. Most likely due to the amount of weather that side sees (puddles on the side of the road due to the slope of the surface). This seems to be typical on any car though.

Thanks for all of the input and hopefully someone can benefit from the methods that worked for me. I can tell you if your car is rusty, you will have your work cut out for you...

 

PB Blaster works pretty good for me, just gotta give it some soak time...

 

good to hear you got it off...mine was fairly simple. i just took a breaker bar to the bolt and a torque wrench (not the gun) to the nut and used my copious amounts of muscle mass to break the bolt loose...i ended up getting so swole and jacked up that i broke the strut in half..

ok so maybe it didn't go that far but it was pretty easy...imo, leverage > torque gun. torque guns aren't better, they're just way easier and less time consuming

 

This is true, you need to soak it.

I have NEVER seen any of these products immediately make a difference. While it has seemed to help, I have never been able to gauge how much. I still use the stuff

I just feel like there are too many variables to say "... yep that did it."

 

as for sliding the bolts out...either the front or back needs to be completely off the ground to make it easy.

so if youre trying to take the front off...you should have BOTH the front tires off the ground. same for the rear.