|
Middle finger worn out? Got project pictures? Severe hand lacerations? You're in the right thread. They say sharing is part of the healing process, so heal those knuckles with your stories of the worst fasteners. Bonus points for pictures. I've resided in project Hell long enough to have stories of stubborn caliper bolts, stuck pan bolts and much, much more. In recent memory, the worst fastener was a control arm bolt on my 1992 FJ80. Lots of swearing, torching and penetrating oil. But when I heard that thunderclap of metal separating from itself, a hearty "gently caress yeah" escaped my lips on a job persevered. That's just the tip of the iceberg, more to come. What's your tale about a fastener from Hell? Were you like an automotive Ahab and end up procuring ungodly amounts of tools to seek vengeance?
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2015 05:47
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 00:02 |
|
|
I live in Florida. I can break most bolts on my car loose with just a standard ratchet wrench, don't even need a breaker bar.  E: I should mention the car is 12 years old and has been parked outside its entire life. Fender Anarchist fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Mar 20, 2015 |
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2015 06:04
|
|
|
The screw on collar on an E34 shock tube is the only fastener that has ever really beaten me. I spent half a day torching it red hot and pounding on it. At one point I had the entire hub, tire and shock attached, wedged under my deck while I jumped on a massive breaker bar and all it did was start to break the deck. I have one new in box E34 front shock sitting in my garage to remind me of my failure.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2015 06:11
|
|
|
I bought my truck in the southwest and moved to the southeast. Today I took out the plate that the battery sits on, it was pretty rusty and corroded. Two bolts and a nut, they were all pretty nasty. Came out easy as hell, cause it was barely surface rust. Literally never in my life had a fastener more difficult to remove than an oil pan plug some dick put on with an impact gun. Just wanted you to know.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2015 06:32
|
|
|
I haven't really had too much trouble with fasteners. Anything I can't get off with a ratchet gets the impact gun. Occasionally stuff breaks, and for some reason it's been on the '88 not the '60s cars recently.  There was that one time that the torque spec was wrong and I sheared off the crank sprocket bolt, though. That was fun.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2015 08:11
|
|
|
Subaru lateral link to big rear end bolts. They use a huge bolt to go through the knuckle and lateral links. The lateral links have a metal sleeve in them. This sleeve rusts to the big rear end bolt. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2015 13:49
|
|
|
40+ year old fasteners can be a right bitch if they really want to. Snapped one exhaust manifold stud and completely loving mangled the nut off another one.  Driver side anchor pin bolt gave me one hell of a time too. It's the one up between the two springs on top. Factory torque rating is something like 140 ft/lbs. I wish it would have only taken that to get it loose.  But as always, leverage was king that day. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2015 15:17
|
|
|
It's not normal to have to drill out 5 year old sway bar end links?
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2015 15:24
|
|
|
The woofers in the doors of Mk. 5 Volkswagen GTIs (and I assume regular Golfs and Jettas as well) are held in by 6 rivets. I burned up my old cordless drill trying to change out a blown speaker, thanks VW!
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2015 15:25
|
|
|
This is the most recent for me, it was a bitch, it's about 10" long in a sleeve so if rust gets in there you're screwed. Couldn't turn it with a 4 foot cheater. Soaked it in penetrating oil for about a week before I could budge it, once it turned a tiny bit I could pound it out while turning.  Ruined it at the same time: 
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2015 18:09
|
|
|
FogHelmut posted:It's not normal to have to drill out 5 year old sway bar end links? It is in Wisconsin. My vote goes to those drat phillips screws they put on the engine side covers of motorcycles. I swear the heads are made from solder, the threads from titanium.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2015 23:24
|
|
|
I've encountered many terrible bolts. The most frustrating of which were these two: Subaru's Rear Subframe Bolt  It's held in by welded nut in the frame of the car, no access from to the back of it, and it tends to rust in place after a few winters. I tried everything to get these fuckers out, One side I drilled out (took forever and it was a bitch and a half, no other options since it snapped right at the frame when I was trying to undo it) while the other side I tried various methods to undo it, including threading it and using two nuts in a similar fashion to how you would remove exhaust studs. Finally the bolt-out socket gripped it tight enough to remove after a few strategic grinds into the shaft.  It snapped partway through undoing it with a bolt-out socket  But it finally came out. After rowing at it for a good while with a 6ft cheater bar. Next up is the Subaru Allen Cam bolts.  Seriously, gently caress these things. I had them apart before, and they were properly torqued to spec after reassembly, but for some god forsaken reason when it came time to remove them, one of them wouldn't budge. It's a common enough problem that there is an aftermarket solution for this, more on that later. They strip the hell out, and you're left with either welding a wheel nut onto them quickly and removing them before the head can damage the camshaft or cam gear, or you can do what I did and grind/drill the loving bold down until you can remove the drat thing from the camshaft.  So as I mentioned earlier, Turn in Concepts (TiC for short) makes these:  They're called the FU Cam bolts. You can probably guess why.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2015 01:24
|
|
|
Changing the box between F350s, it uses a T27 or T35 torx bit. I destroyed every bit the canadian tire stores in town had, and twisted off 2 torx keys dealing with those shits. With a socket, you can just get a bigger socket, bigger drive, hit it with an impact. torx you can't do gently caress all. the head is the size it is and you have to find a bit made of unobtanium if it's stuck.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2015 01:28
|
|
|
This link belongs in this thread. Also, this book is pretty good reading, if a bit dated, as it was written in the 90s.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2015 02:48
|
|
|
MRC48B posted:Also, this book is pretty good reading, if a bit dated, as it was written in the 90s. Additionally, anyone with rounded bolt heads, I'd urge you to consider a set of Irwin Bolt Grip sockets, they really do work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7tGM8_OtCc Finally, today I sheared off a T45 Torx bit trying to remove a VW door hinge bolt. And these bolts look perfect, not a hint of rust on them. They're just ridiculously tight for what they are. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2015 20:06
|
|
|
InitialDave posted:It's still what I'd recommend to people as the best introduction to the subject, though.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2015 20:37
|
|
|
Francis Baconator posted:That was when she told me that she wished all fastners were torx since we've had pretty good luck with them on my project cars and remarked how the door strikers used them too.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2015 20:46
|
|
|
InitialDave posted:Careful - VAG ones are often XZN triple-square.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2015 20:52
|
|
|
InitialDave posted:Finally, today I sheared off a T45 Torx bit trying to remove a VW door hinge bolt. And these bolts look perfect, not a hint of rust on them. They're just ridiculously tight for what they are. Those Halfords bit sockets aren't very strong. When i had a set they broke frequently, and are very brittle. If you deal with a lot of Torx, worth checking eBay for a used set of Snap-on Heavy Duty Removal Torx bit sockets, with the gold-coloured bits. They're very strong. InitialDave posted:Careful - VAG ones are often XZN triple-square. Which of all the recessed-drive fasteners are probably the best. I've only ever had one strip out to the point it needed drilling out and extracting. XZN are great. Problem with a lot of the recessed-drive fasteners is that the head is often too shallow, or any dirt that gets in there stops the bit engaging at full depth, and so they slip out and/or strip the head.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2015 20:53
|
|
|
Mooseykins posted:Which of all the recessed-drive fasteners are probably the best. I've only ever had one strip out to the point it needed drilling out and extracting. XZN are great. Problem with a lot of the recessed-drive fasteners is that the head is often too shallow, or any dirt that gets in there stops the bit engaging at full depth, and so they slip out and/or strip the head. That is why I always scrape out the head of the bolt before I put in the bit, so that it doesn't risk stripping.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2015 20:59
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:That is why I always scrape out the head of the bolt before I put in the bit, so that it doesn't risk stripping. Same here, run into very few issues that way. I have a wide selection of extractors, and it's nice to not have to use them!
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2015 21:02
|
|
|
Mooseykins posted:Those Halfords bit sockets aren't very strong. When i had a set they broke frequently, and are very brittle. If you deal with a lot of Torx, worth checking eBay for a used set of Snap-on Heavy Duty Removal Torx bit sockets, with the gold-coloured bits. They're very strong.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2015 21:04
|
|
|
InitialDave posted:It's a drilled one for security-type heads, which probably didn't help. I'm generally quite happy with Halfords stuff for the price. A lot of it is really good, and much is made by Danaher Group. (Draper, GearWrench.) I have a few Halfords tools and am very happy with them. Not impressed that the warranty excludes professionals, yet they're advertised as professional tools.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2015 21:14
|
|
|
Triple square owns. I put ungodly amounts of torque on the ones holding my wheel hub in and they looked perfect when I got them out.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2015 23:48
|
|
|
The worst I had in recent memory was the final drive drain plug on my old ST1100 bike from a few years ago. I have no idea how much over spec it was tightened by the PO or dealer, but jesus christ what a pain in the rear end. The worst part was that the head was shallow and aluminum. I ended up using vice grips and the metal was so soft, I was deforming it significantly just when engaging the grips. What a pain in the rear end that was.
|
|
#
?
Mar 22, 2015 00:40
|
|
|
Oh man, I could write a bible (even by my standards) worth of bolts I hate. And almost all of them wouldn't exist if the engineers responsible for the design had worked "in the trenches" for a half decade before getting to design anything.
|
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2015 16:57
|
|
|
From this weekend : loving 13mm bolt into a weldnut holding the seat frame on my XJ. Of course being on the floor in the land of salt and woe, the washer was siezed to the bolt which was seized to the mount. Had to get the 2' cheater on it and the rusted-rear end weldnut tore out a 1" chunk of the crossmember it was bolted into before letting loose. Honorable mention goes to the torx head screws on the back of HP enterprise-class servers. They are apparently made of some form of Chineseium even more fragile than usual, and will strip out if you think about taking them out too loudly.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2015 03:42
|
|
|
Living in the rust belt, rust and binding are a way of life. My dad left two hoses connected through the winter, and they are now one hose forever. The connectors were metal and the hand of god herself could not get those apart now.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2015 21:47
|
|
|
AWFUL loving BOLTS: Jeep Cherokees, stem to stern: - steering box bolts are a right bastard. 7/16-14 thread, they go through a cast aluminum spacer into a cast iron saginaw steering box which is through drilled, so the cast aluminum galvanically corrodes to the bolt and the iron rusts to it from both ends. Bend over and kiss your rear end goodbye, those fuckers aren't coming out unless you get very lucky. If they do, wire wheel them and run a tap through the holes. - oil filter adapter is a monstrous banjo bolt that only a BMW engineer would envy. It's got next to zero access and is like, a T60 or larger Torx. It's so buried you have to pop the drive slug out of the bit and use a box wrench on it, because a breaker bar and the squaredrive socket part of the bit won't fit between the bolt and the frame rail. - Throttle position sensor is held on with either a T20 or T25 torx, I forget which. Not particularly bad until you've stripped both the bolt head and the only torx bit you have in that size, then they kinda suck. - some people hate the upper bellhousing bolts since they are an external torx E12. I like em since I bought the $45 socket set for those and have to justify owning it somehow. - transmission crossmember bolts and studs (M10x1.5) love to break off in the frame rails. - rear shock mount bolts break off in the drat unibody. They're 5/16 UNC and even looking at them funny breaks them off. I know people from socal who have had all four break even after using their penetrating oil of choice for weeks. - rear leaf spring eye bolts and shackle to unibody bolts (M14x2.0) break off in the drat unibody, or even worse, break the welds holding the nut to the (completely inaccessible) pocket in the frame rail, leaving you spinning the bolt until you die of old age. Get friendly with the grinder, you miserable sod, and hope you know someone with a welder who can be bribed with beer at 9pm on a Sunday! - rear bumper bracket to unibody bolts (unsure, probably M10x1.5) break off in the weldnuts, or worse, turn the tab on the end of the frame rail into a pretzel since they're only spotwelded to it, not the rear crossmember. - all the door hinge bolts are some goofy rear end button head torx. Haha. Torx. SUCKEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR  Subaru Forester: - BABs (Big rear end Bolts) already covered by Slow is Fast - head bolts like to rip the threads out of the block if the head gaskets have been done several times by people who don't care about the car that much, AKA flatrate mechanics. Call up your machine shop and hope they don't gently caress you too hard in exchange for timeserting the block. - radiator bracket bolts on the upper radiator support crossmember twist off more often than not. - balljoints are a bastard poo poo job from hell even though they're not threaded, and once you get the pinch bolt out. Until you know the trick, that is. They involve a pinch bolt that's threaded into the goddamned knuckle, but fortunately there's enough space to just blast straight through with a 10mm drill and through-bolt it if you break one off. Run a tap through these and use the new bolts and antiseize or you'll regret it. Once the pinch bolt is out of the way, slice and dice the balljoint shell with an angle grinder through the pinch slot and knock the pieces out with a chisel. - rear subframe to chassis bolts, as already mentioned - ignition cylinder is apparently held in with twist-off tamperproof bolts. gently caress you, Subaru. Just gently caress you. Toyota Tundra: - exhaust manifold to downpipe flanges are done with M10 studs threaded into the manifold flange. Why? No loving idea, they're not cast iron manifolds, the flange is a piece of 1/4" steel plate and it would have been cheaper to make if they'd just punched a hole instead of threading it. They could have through bolted it and made your life easy, but they didn't, so all six of those M10 studs are now going to snap off or the nuts will round and you get to drill them out while standing or lying directly under the spot all the hot sharp fragments of metal will fall from for the next couple hours. Debating pulling the manifolds so you can drill these out in comfort on your drill press?  stop right there, that means undoing 16 more studs of the same design except now they're threaded into your aluminum cylinder heads, so they're corroded in there galvanically and you are about to make your life far more dismal unless you needed to do head gaskets anyways. Forget about pulling the manifolds, don your safety glasses and through-drill the manifold flanges then blast a set of 3/8 grade 8 hardware from tractor supply bolts-and-nuts-by-the-pound in there while flipping off the rear end in a top hat engineer who designed this thing.- O2 sensors are nicely designed for if you're replacing the exhaust - they're held on with studs or small machine bolts instead of a big M18x1.5 thread into a bung, so when the studs break off you just put in hardware store bolts on the new exhaust and call it a day. Not so great if you're trying to replace only an O2 sensor and your exhaust now has broken off bolts in it, though. Another 5 minutes of thought going into the design would have made these through bolts, which would have been nice. Toyota Rav4.1: - gas tank strap bolts go into a weldnut on a little crossmember spotwelded to the unibody. Hope you didn't want to pull that, now did you? - exhaust manifold studs love to strip out. They're M10x1.25, aside from a few being hidden behind the alternator this is a pretty painless job, just drill em all out, helicoil, and install new studs. I learned the hard way that if one pulled out from thermal cycling (manifold gasket leak was the initial complaint) another will pull out when you put it back together unless you helicoil them all, and it'll definitely be the last one you have to tighten before the job is done. Just helicoil all 7 the first time. - e-brake cable to brake backing plate bolts are microscopic and threaded into a through-drilled hole in cast aluminum. Hope you either don't have to pull them (you do, if you're doing rear wheel bearings) or don't mind pulling the gas tank to replace the cables. Guess how I found out the gas tank strap bolts are stupid on this vehicle? Just through-drill the cast aluminum e-brake cable ends and use hardware store bolts, it won't hurt anything. The next guy will think you're a hack, and he'll be right, but his life will be easier as a result so gently caress his opinion. - two of the front subframe/engine cradle bolts are monstrous M10 or M12 bolts and go up into a threaded thimble welded into the unibody rail. It's utterly inaccessible and generally breaks loose from the unibody rather than the bolt breaking free, because Toyota helpfully put a 1/8" hole all the way through the top end so water can get down into the threads from the top as well as up from the bottom. I haven't figured out how to solve this one yet but I expect it to curse my existence two weekends from now. Suggestions welcome, other than alcohol and swearing because both are already on the list. Ford Ranger, V6 3.0 edition, but probably others too: - motor mounts have a threaded stud on the bottom into the frame rail, which is nice, but IT COMES OUT RIGHT OVER THE loving FRONT AXLE HOUSING. So you have to drop the front diff to get at them in any reasonable way. We cut our losses and decided the stock motor mounts looked fine still, kicking this problem down the road for another couple years. - exhaust manifold to cylinder head bolts are M8x1.25 and made of finely aged mozzarella. The upper row have a 2/3 chance of breaking off (because ford engineers are morons and through drilled for absolutely no reason, resulting in ten times as much rust in the threads), sometimes in normal use before you ever put a wrench on them ( ) and the lower ones will make your rear end pucker before finally popping loose. They also use ridiculous "stud-bolt" contraptions that cost TWELVE DOLLARS EACH at the dealer. Run a tap through em and replace with bargain basement class 10 hardware off mcmaster-carr. I can get part numbers for anyone who wants them, I think we spent 25 bucks on all the hardware to replace every single manifold bolt.- exhaust manifold to Y-pipe bolts are M12x1.75, made from forged diamond stock, through bolted, and basically can be considered one with the manifold by the time you get in there. They also have reduced heads for absofuckinglutely no reason and I want to meet the engineer responsible in a darkened alley with a meat tenderizing hammer as a result. Heat them all cherry red with an O/A torch, try backing them out, then when they round or break, heat them up again, wrap them in fiberglass batting, and put in a warm place to cool as slowly as possible. Drill the remains out now that they're softened. - the lowest two bellhousing bolts go through holes in the cast iron block and into tapped holes in the cast aluminum bellhousing. Through drilled, tapped holes. Galvanic corrosion makes the last 3 or 4 threads of the tip of the bolt balloon up and become one with the aluminum; these 3 threads will seize into the bolt and get torn loose when you turn it, then will happily trample every other thread you care about as you fight them out a sixteenth of a turn at a time, loudly popping and creaking. God help you if they break. If they don't, expect to need an M12x1.75 helicoil kit. - front radiator/cab mount bolts are special order only and seize into a carefully designed water and road grime retention pocket known as the threaded metal piece molded into the mount. If you have to touch these, simply order new washers, mounts, and bolts and assume you'll be going medieval on them the second you touch them with a wrench, 'cause they're gonna loving break. - crank position sensor bolts are microscopic and if the heads aren't shaped like a potato from rust, they will snap off in the cast aluminum timing cover without further ado if you so much as consider attempting to unscrew them. If the first breaks and the sensor still works or you aren't sure if it's at fault, don't gently caress with the second. If the second breaks, you poor bastard, now you get to pull the alternator and bracket, AC compressor lines, water pump, oil pan (which technically requires pulling the engine out - hope I didn't scare you off with the bellhousing and exhaust bolts!), harmonic balancer, and a bunch of other garbage I'm forgetting just to get the timing cover off so you can try and drill a microscopic hardened steel bolt out of a delicate cast aluminum boss. Good luck. - lower fender attachment hardware is probably a rotted mess due to poor chassis design, but fortunately it isn't holding anything other than flakes of paint in place anymore so pretend you saw nothing and leave it the gently caress alone. - bed mount bolts are probably seized into their clip nuts, but fortunately a new set of all the hardware is cheap as hell so if the gigantic rusted Torx heads give you any trouble, grind them off, lift the bed off, hack and slash the bolts and clip nuts with an angle grinder till everything falls off, install new hardware and never look back. - EGR bungs (M22x1.5 thread into cast iron exhaust parts, what could go wrong?) like to seize in. That's alright, because they don't need to come out unless the EGR tube flare nut seizes onto the other end of the bung. Oh, what's that you say, they always do? Haha sucks to be you! Audi, B5 chassis specifically but probably others: - upper front balljoint pinch bolts. They are through bolted which is nice but also a real poo poo job to drill out if things go wrong. - front CV axle to transmission bolts. Some are triple square, some are allen, depending on whether someone used the poo poo-tier allen bolts that came with their poo poo-tier replacement CV axle. All like to round out if not perfectly picked clean and carefully used. All the rear suspension bolts that go through bushings. loving hell VAG why did you do this to us? All pickup cab and bed mount fasteners are a disaster. Period. Buy new ones, and hope they aren't studs (like Jeep Comanche beds are held in with!) that break off in the bed cross rails, or into weld nuts on the frame. Expect to have to butcher the rubber part too, probably. They seem to design the frames and cabs specifically to collect water on top of each piece of metal, so you may not even have anything to put a new mount INTO if you are in the rust belt. Exhaust hardware can be assumed to be one time use. Unless it's a stud or a threaded hole in one of the parts, in which case the automotive gods have not smiled upon you because guess what, that poo poo's still one time use, it's just your problem to figure out how to recover when it rounds or breaks. Haha, sucker. O2 sensors require an act of Congress AND a presidential pardon to come out with threads intact. The threads you need are generally the ones that get destroyed. I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting, that's just the last two years or so. I need a drat drink. kastein fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Apr 7, 2015 |
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2015 00:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 00:02 |
|
|
kastein posted:AWFUL loving BOLTS: Mazda mpv is a bitch with these. And Saturn slwhatever has them and they SUCK DICK TO DOOO. So much that removing the steering wheel is a much better way of doing it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2015 14:19
|
|