Frozen Rear Spring Thru Bolt

[Dick Elliott]

How do you remove a frozen thru bolt that goes thru the front spring eye on the rear spring of a Pinto. The bolt is bonded to the bushing inside the rubber spring eye bushing. When you turn the bolt, the steel bushing turns with the bolt, and since this steel bushing is larger than the bolt hole, nothing is removeable. I've tryed everthing short of a cutting torch with no luck.HELP!!! DICK

[LOBSTA1]

Dick, sorry to hear about that only had mine apart a couple times, but I had that happen on a Chevy. Torch will be real smelly!!! try aa Dremel I use these for everything!! Or a air powered cut off tool if there is room? Good luck Glenn FFR

[Dick Elliott]

There's not even room for a hacksaw blade. Never had any trouble when the cars were new, but now, rust has set in . May have to cut the spring to fix this. DICK

[joeg]

Dick--If you have a lot of time and patience, numerous applications of KROIL (Kano Labs) will do the trick.

Torch would be quickest--but what a mess.

If you can get a wrench on it, you should be able to get a mini cut-off wheel in there.

Good luck!

[MarkL]

I had this problem, too. I used a cutoff tool to cut through the case hardening on the bolt (the cutoff tool will not go all the way through the bolt--dia. is too large to get it in. If the cutoff wheel is small enogh to fit, it won't reach.) Then I used a hacksaw blade to go the rest of the way. It took a few blades and a lot of time. You will have to repaint the spring bracket. It is a pain in the @$$ but there is no other way. Once it's done, it's done. Just make sure to take it apart for miantenance (grease) every once in a while.

[trueblue]

I have had great success using an air hammer with a punch shank. It hits many times harder than you can with a regular hammer. Good luck