I was changing out my right side drive axle, went to loosen the lower pinch bolt on the steering knuckle. My torx socket was slipping due to the head of the bolt being rusty. Anyway I can extract this bolt without having to drill it out and risk messing up the threads on the steering knuckle?
Yours is threaded? Mine has a nut on the other side, but that's 05. 03 might be different. Use something like Kroil or PB Blaster on the back side of the pinch bolt, give it some time. I'd also use it on the front side to help clean the rust out of there. Best wishes.
And put some heat to it, you don't need to have oxyacetylene, I use a butane soldering torch (like in the picture), it can put enough heat on most bolts to loosen them up. And because it is small, you can direct the heat exactly where you want it.
Thanks for the adivce fellas but its all boogered up. Looks like I will need to replace the lower ball joint which is no big deal but now need a new steering kunckle. How do you seperate it from the strut?
CUT the nut/bolt off then punch the bolt through without having to mess with the torx end. An angle grinder is about $9 at harbor freight - use a metal cutting disc.
It's at the lower ball joint. I undid the nut and tried to tap it out with a hammer but no luck. So then I cut the head off and tried to drill it out. I assumed the steering knuckle was threaded and the pinch bolt was seized.
The lower pinch bolt is only threaded into the nut. I had to hit mine with an air hammer to remove, for a while.
When you replace the bolt, use a hex head bolt and SOAK it in anti-seize. Probably a good idea to replace the LCA with ball joint now since the process of removing the bolt like this buggers the ball joint.
Crushed a mild steel bolt trying to press the pinch bolt out. Had to use hardened steel. Took 3 tries at full pressure. Then POP out it came, good as new.
Got the lower control arm/ball joint combo put back together but found it odd the my Haynes manual called for 170ft lbs of torque on the front bolt. Is it just me or does that seem like way too much?
Lower arm balljoint to steering knuckle clamp bolt - 37 ft lb
Lower arm to subframe front bolt - between 125 and 170 ft lb
The first spec is the correct one.
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