I’m just a Saturday mechanic with a Sears Craftman ratchet set and a few screwdrivers is about all I have, but I’ve come across plenty of stuck bolts and nuts and other parts rusted stuck. One of the most memorable was a front brake disc. The disc in normal operation is held to the wheel by the t…

PB Blaster , is one lazyman option, a blow torch number 2, cutting wheel or oxy acetylene torch #3 Edit impact wrench first then above!

If there is enough room and enough bolt or nut to grab, I have an 18" pipe wrench that works well. This is usually after a PB Blaster soaking. I recently used a manual impact driver to replace the door latch on my Explorer. It wasn’t rusted, but was tight enough where a simple screwdriver couldn’t l…

Wrestling stuck fasteners is a way of life for mechanics and time has to be spent on that pain in the neck job no matter how proficient the mechanic. Other than what you’ve mentioned, welding a nut onto a broken bolt is an option and in some cases if there’s enough of a nub still protruding a tiny m…

The oxy acetylene torch succeeds when all else fails…

Tell me about stuck/rusted fasteners. Here’s what had to be done in order to remove the long bolts from the knuckles in order to replace the rear lateral links on a Camry. And it took a day of heating up and cooling down with an oxy/acetylene outfit before they broke loose. Tester

I don’t do much of heavy work, but have an assortment of schedule 40 PVC pipe and keep adding length and girth to the wrench until something happens.

Since it got me more than once, I’ll add this: Make sure your “stuck bolt” isn’t actually just reverse-threaded.

I doubt I have anything special to add, though once I bought an air impact I couldn’t figure out why I’d waited so long to do it. Its not that it does everything, but it works wonders on many things I used to wrestle with. Impact of some kind is always my favorite approach. If I can’t fit the air…

Tricks for removing stuck bolts and nuts

Maintenance/Repairs

Rod-Knox March 6, 2012, 8:07am 6

An acetylene torch is hard to beat. I sometimes press a candle at the base of the threads after heating and move the bolt back and forth to get the wax to wick down and lubricate the joint. Stuck parts seem to be the coup de grace for would be mechanics. After needing to be bailed out a few times after breaking bolts they just give up on trying.

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Tricks for removing stuck bolts and nuts

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