I tried to re-center my beam and found that i couldnt remove the bolt that held the bottom of the strut to the axle. There seems to be a a "caging" around the nut that holds the bolt in but when i turn the bolt the nut eats into the caging around it. How do i get this off? sorry if it sounds newbish...i searched on all the spring install write-ups and they all basiically say "remove large bolt holding strut to rear axle"

any help would be appreciated..

Thakns

 

try jamming a flathead screwdriver between the caging and the nut while loosening the bolt

 

I know that little bastard bolt pretty well. Once mine started turning, I grabbed the biggest pair of vice grips I could and was able to get 2 sides of the nut and the "cage" and it came loose after working it with a breaker bar (PB Blaster helped too). The other side I wasn't so lucky, we had to weld the nut to the cage/bracket....

Good luck!

 

thanks guys... anyone else wanna chime in on how they got theirs off? any help would be appreciated...im planning on re-doing my suspension set up this summer so it would be great to know an easy way of getting it off

 

Mine were pretty seized as well.....salty roads in the winter + roadgrime will do that!

I hit mine with wd40 (all I had on-hand) and wailed on it with an impact wrench at max setting.....in the end I had to put a breaker-bar on it and break it manually.

Lesson to us all: when reassembling nuts and bolts on the undercarriage, use ANTI-SEIZE COMPOUND on everything!
--it makes removal ALOT easier the next time you have to do it--

gr

 

im bumping this thread b/c i need some more answers...could the suspension guru's answer my question? I know Irish has done his suspension MANY times...where are u man?!

Thanks!

 

Hi OutMaxxed, were you able to get any further help on removing the rear bolt since the nut is spinning within the housing cage? I am now also experiencing this same issue on my 5th gen.

 

That bolt is very hard/impossible to remove because it is under considerable rotational force from the coil spring. If you remove the strut from the upper mount then the bolt will come out easily.

You might as well remove the strut from the upper mount (by climbing into the trunk and removing the nuts) because it is impossible to line up and mount the lower strut and get that bolt back in with the strut in the upper mount. Once the strut is secured in the lower mount the studs on the upper strut mount are long enough that you can stick a long (~ 2'+) screw driver between the studs and rotate them so the studs line up with the strut mount holes in the car. I used the car jack (that came with the car) under the axle to force the strut studs into their holes while aligning them with the screw driver. I saw this whole procedure in a rear strut replacement video on youtube.

 

Jam something in between the nut and cage. A flat head screwdriver, chisel, whatever. An impact wrench is the best tool to remove the bolt.

Make sure the whole axle is hanging and both sides of the chassis are on jack stands.

 

Thank you so much for your prompt responses oughtsix, much appreciated. I should have been more clearer. I actually meant the large bottom bolt of the entire shock/strut assembly to the rear axle, the nut is located in this C shape housing.

 

Thank you for the prompt response JSutter. That's what I originally attempted by jamming a flat head screwdriver to try to prevent the nut from rotating when I was trying to loosen the bolt, but unfortunately that didn't work either. So that's why I joined this great forum to see if anyone had successfully done this same procedure when they encountered this issue. This community rocks w/ a lot of great members.

 

Get some Pb Blaster and soak it good, use a good 1/2" impact to zip it off. I had to stop by local Harbor Freight and picked up their 1/2" electric impact, it got the job done on my son's 2000 SE. Make sure that the rear beam is "free hanging" (rear end of the car up on jack stands, both rear wheels off) to prevent side loading the lower strut bolt.

 

We just put new rear strut assemblies on my daughters 2003 Maxima about a month ago. I spent an hour trying to get that bolt back in before I resorted to youtube. The coil spring on the strut assembly causes the bottom hole the bolt goes through to twist putting a rotational force on the bolt making it hard to get out and near impossible to get back in when the strut is secured in the upper mount. I left the lower bolt in while removing the nuts from the upper studs and then the lower bolt came out very easy. I left the lower bolt in so the strut wouldn't fall on the floor when the top studs were unbolted, side effect was easy removal of the lower bolt.

Are you replacing your rear struts?

 

Yes I am trying to replace my rear strut assembly on my 2002 max. I was able to replace both front strut assembly last year without any problems. I saw a youtube where one guy used a vise grip but don't understand how he could possibly grip any surface area of the nut because there's a metal bar of the housing on the underside. Here's a picture of the top view and bottom view.

 

new car time with that much rust.

otherwise torch, welder, and pray

 

That's bad. Try heat or cut the bolt and get a new one.

 

Spray it well with PB blaster, hammer in a chisel in to the space to stop the nut from spinning, and use a impact driver to zip off the bolt.

 

Thanks @slvr2KSE5, @JSutter and @nick. The engine is still running pretty good so I would like to try and keep it running for as long as I can. I'll definitely soak it in PB and try the chisel since the flathead didn't work last time.