yesterday my friend and i got to work dropping my transmission so we can do my clutch and replace it with a 5th gen tranny. we were moving pretty fast until we got to the axle nuts.

when i first got the car, i took it to a shop to have it checked over, and the ebay seller i bought it from sent me a check to get some work done at that shop. among the things they did were the front brakes and the cv joints. they torqued the axle nut WAY TOO HIGH and put loctite on it!!

well now, we CANNOT get the axle nuts off. we've broken a half-inch drive ratchet, a torque wrench, and bent two breaker bars and a couple pieces of rebar which we used to keep the rotor from turning. we've used a propane torch, liquid wrench, and an impact gun, all to no avail.

does anyone have ANY recommendations of what we can do to get this nut off? right now, our only plan is breaking even more tools until we get to the point where we just have to put the car back together and take it somwhere to have the nut removed.

(right now, we're using the heat + liquid wrench + my craftsman 1/2" ratchet + a 4-ft 10-gauge galvanized steel pipe as a breaker bar + a 3/4" crow bar to brace the rotor)

cliffs notes: need help getting a ridiculously difficult axle nut off. tried everything we can think of.

thanks for your help.

 

Take it back to the shop that put the axles on... (doesn't matter how long ago it was) - they should be able to break (their tools) and get it loose

 

If you can't get it off with an impact, you've got problems. You will probably need a gallon of elbow grease and some good luck. While someone is turning the nut, try hitting the end of the socket with a hammer (not hard enought to crack the metal) but it just helps as a vibration to help loosen it up.
You can also try and find out what that loctite is made of and see if there is some sort of thinner for it like acetone or something and see if that will soak in and break some of it up. If the shop is still in business that you took it to show the shop owner what they did and have them remove it for free because loctite is not necessary for the axle bolt, it has a cotter pin for crying out loud!!

 

we tried calling the shop. the owner blew up at my friend and i and said that i should have just taken the car to a professional, and hung up on us.

we tried using heat on the nut to melt the loctite, but it didn't work. in fact, we just broke another craftsman ratchet with TWO of us pulling/pushing the breaker bar. we also bent our crow bar. it's not the loctite that's the problem so much as the ridiculous torque. thanks though.

any other ideas?

 

You gotta get it into a shop - that's your best bet. By the time you get it loose (if you ever do), you'll have spent so much on broken tools that it would have been cheaper to go to a shop.

 

would soaking it in PB BLASTER help even though its loctite?

 

alright, thanks guys. right now i'm waiting for a call back from a family friend who owns a heavy equipment maintenance business, but unless he'll loan me a BIG impact gun, i think we'll just have to put it back together.

any other ideas are welcome though, thanks.

 

I have a question, why were you using a torque wrench to loosen bolts? Put a 5ft pipe on a breaker bar and it should work fine.

 

dave, we broke our only other 1/2" drive ratchet on this bolt and needed something stronger.

we thought about using a longer pipe to get more leverage but it would just break any tool we tried to use without moving the nut at all.

 

Don't use ratchets as breaker bars. They will break. Go to Sears and buy a 1/2" or a 3/4" drive breaker bar and get a 6' pipe as a cheater bar.

 

well, unfortunately i dont have any but ive heard of this stuff that works to loosen parts off from gas turbines. It actually can work its way agaist gravity right up a tread. Its great stuff.

 

: that helps the OP a lot, especially without the name of the product.

This one time at bandcamp...

 

different terminology; i mean we're using a ratchet as well as a "cheater bar," as you call it.

 

Go get a 3/4" drive breaker bar. Get one 3/4" drive socket of axle nut size. Use large pipe on end of breaker.

 

I concur.

Bashar

 

locktite is definately a ***** ... ask the shop what kind they used.

depending on that, you'll have to use high temp. .. but then again, if yu used a torch, it should have broken it down. Maybe try some more?

 

sin & supermax: we thought about using a bigger drive socket, but i'd be looking at at probably $100 for that stuff. so far i'm down about $15 in materials, which is much more reasonable for me, and that family friend is going to stop by and help us first thing in the morning, so with any luck that'll be all the money i waste on this.

nadir: yeah, we got that nut to somewhere around 200-220 degrees the last time we tried. we'll definitely heat it up again before we try the impact gun tomorrow, but i think we got it plenty hot and just couldn't put enough force on it.

 

you really should buy a craftsman breaker bar, so even if it breaks, they'll give you a new one. Personally, to remove a nut off of the torque member while doing my brake job, I broke a socket (was kind of old), and two rachets before buying a breaker bar.