Well, I went home friday night and worked on this until sat. night, because I have duty on sunday. It's a fricken nightmare, let us begin...

My front brake rotors warped, so I bought new slotted rotors all around, high temp fluid, and hawk hps pads. I went to change these last friday, but with minimal success. Ok, first put it on jack stands and take the tires off, remove pads. All is good, I never had such an easy time removing pads before. Next step, remove the caliper, the bearer of the problem arises.

How do you get these bolts out? First I broke two stanely socket wrenches trying to get them off. The middle sized wrench. Ok, time to break out the craftsmans. We then proceded to break my remaining three craftsman wrenches trying to remove this friggen thing. Time to step it up a notch. Pull out the big craftsman, this thing will surely not break, right?

Yes, I was right, now the socket cracks(btw, using deepwell 6 point sockets). Cool, cool, lets try something a little stronger like impact wrench sockets. Bad idea, the impact sockets will also break, coming apart at the corners of the bolt just like the last.

WTF!! these bolts have no rust on them! Why are they so hard to remove?! Ok, no more games. I put it back together, and drive it out to my friends shop, front end jumping up and down at every stop because of the warped rotor, scaring the heck out of me.

There we Hit it with some acetylen(spelling?) torch, we heated up the part it threads onto, the nuckle on the hub. Still will not move with our breaker bar setup, and heat. WTF? We borrow an impact wrench, still no go. So we hook it up to our massive air supply out back to try to get the most out of it, It works noticebly better, but the bolt will not budge!

So as a last rosort, avoided because repair will warrent welding to fix it, or would require us to fix it so no one else can. We drilled sideways through the nuckle, this being the part the bolt threads into, a few times, using a chisle for a half an hour to get it to let go/release pressure from the bolt. Still ******* stuck. This whole situation seriously gave me a migrane.

So, I think I will get a set price from a shop, and let then handle it, as I have no fricken idea how to get those bolts out. I did manage to get the bottom one out on the drivers side, but that was the only one that would grace us with it's presence this past weekend.

Any ideas? After all that I was done, and let someone else confident try. He used a 12 point wrench, and sure enough the bolt finally rounded off. Now, does anybody know where I can buy new bolts? Or how to take care of this? All I need to do is put new rotors on it, hell I have spent enough on them, bah, if you read all of this thanks, and give me tips if you can...later

 

Impact wrench should take them off. Impact guns work by impacting several times persecond at lower torques. Thus breaking free whatever is holding the bolt (usually rust/oxidation). Your're just trying to put a whole shitload of force on the bolt, and instead are breaking your tools. The many impacts/second also means you're going to break alot less bolts than you will with your push tools.

an impact gun is the way to go, trust me, I've been there, and to anyone who says "yeah but he'll only use it once". Get real, he's got an rx-7, **** breaks so often he'll be using it once every few months.

If you goto a pawn shop you can get a decent gun for around $50. I bought mine at home depot new for $80 and it does 450ft/lbs in reverse. Buying a pawn shop you might end up paying $50 for something that only does 150ft lbs or something. Its best to buy new, but anyhow.

You will need an air compressor though :/

No red rust? Go figure, its not made of iron. Just beacuse its not red doesn't mean its not rust. Aluminum rusts white/grey, but it rusts justs the same.

One other thing, Last winter I had to remove the entire rear hubs just and take themt o a machine shop beacuse the caliper bolts were so foobard. The machine shop charged me $40 for complete disasembly of the entire rear hubs. I had them press in new rear bearings, and new rear rear-steer-elims for $40. As an idea of what you should pay on labor if you have to take it in to be disasembled.

 

If you read the whole post I said I tried that. We even tried hoking it up to a huge air supply, I mean this thing is bigger than me, so air was not a problem, anything else for tips?

 

try spraying it with some pblaster or wd-40 or something and let it sit for a while...then keep blasting it with the lube while you impact it...

if that doesn't work i don't know what to tell you...i just did my brakes last week and didn't have a problem with any of the bolts...some were harder to get out than others, but i didn't have any of the trouble you're having...

good luck

 

Yeah, I used two cans of liquid wrench, and after those were gone, I used what was left of the wd-40. About a 1/4 left. I did this friday night...and they still didn't come loose. This is just a real bummer because I have to find rides from great lakes illinois to green bay everytime I want to work on it, and I can only leave on the weekends, I dare not drive it down here with it hopping all around while braking like that...later

 

I would use PB Blaster on it. Heat it up, spray it with PB, soak it really good and let it sit for a week. Then use the impact. Try tightening and then loosening. Back and forth, keep spraying it.

 

if those bolts are seriously stuck, the only option is to remove the steering knuckle, center punch the bolts and drill them out.

the impact wrench need to be 300-450 ft./lbs to do the job right. all the air in the world wont matter on a 50 ft lb wrench.


good luck.

 

you know what....its sounds to me your problem is your turning the bolt the wrong way. seriously...not calling you stupid or anything (haha...i accidently did it for a little then caught myself ), but u are prob turning the bolt the wrong way because you are looking at it from your side, and not the bolt heads side.

 

he used an impact wrench, so thats unlikely....

 

highly unlikely. At first when I was having troubles I thought it might have been reverse threaded, but then I got one of them out and dismissed that theory. I have never had a problem turning a bolt the wrong way except in the reverse thread case. Trust me, I spent an entire two days, I had plenty of time to weed out the stupidity's on my part. My brothers even tried to do it thw wrong way before I pointed it out to them. It's just so frusterating...later

 

well there must be a SH**LOAD of locktite or something on there, even though i dont know why anyone would put that on. maybe someone just used the wrong bolt too? i really dont see how an impact gun isnt doing the job right even still. i would go back to your friends and get the torch out again. dont just make it warm....make that baby red hot! (know the limit and dont make it so hot ull just damage it) If theres locktite or somethin on there, hopefully that burns up. impact gun again......that dont work.....beats the hell outta me!

 

check to see if the PB blaster is flamable before you heat it up. I think it is.

 

I’m surprised you haven't stripped the bolt yet!

 

He DID strip the bolt.
I stripped a bolt recently and used a dremel to flatten two opposing sides way way down. Used a large adjustable wrench to fit onto each side and broke the bolt loose.

As for getting a new caliper bolt, go to a hardware store and show them an old one. They have tools that measure all the different parts, just make sure it is a heat resistant bolt.

 

You realize that aluminum doesnt get "red hot" it just up and melts if you don't know what you're doing, right? Heating aluminum is tricky, first because of the much lower melting point than iron, and the fact that it doesn't give you much warning before it melts. Don't forget the part that aluminum is VERY heat conductive, and you have rubber parts in the caliper that will suffer if you screw it up.

 

yes...................ive worked with aluminum plenty of times. notice my sarcasm when i said "dont just make it warm, make that baby red hot" and the little thing in the parenthesis too. u can make aluminum red easily, but yea, it does melt like u said. "know the limit and dont make it so hot ull just damage it". did you not get anything outta that? you act like aluminum is going to become a bunch of liquid drops as soon as you touch it with a torch. its easy not to melt it, in fact, i never even have before doing something like this. i dont see what all your fuss is about. if u use your common sense, ull be fine. just think of things like, "wow, that torch looks way to hot", or "damn, that aluminums lookin a little to red", and "i think im a little to close with the torch". just use your common sense and you wont have any problems

 

Hehe, aluminum doesn't turn red when it heats up, it just up and melts. Buddy of mine melted an aluminum bottomed pot on his electric stove when trying to dry out some sand for his sandblasting booth.

 

SO I can get these bolts from most any local hardware store? That was my main concern as I can drill them out, retap, and use new ones. I mean, it took a few weeks through a custom bolt specialty store to find bolts to block off my power steering lines. So is this correct? Bah, maybe I will get a shop to do it. I was quoted about 110$ from 2 different local shops, but they will probabally charge for extra labor, so I am expecting about $200 for this job. It may be worth it as I need a car very soon, and don't have the time to do it myself at the moment...later

 

bump

 

Now that the head is rounded it might be a little difficult but I have a set of Craftsman rounded bolt sockets.

I would go to a shop that has some really high pressure air. A high volume tank won't do it. Or go to a shop that works on trucks. They usually have some 3/4 inch impact wrenches with really high torque ratings.

Any decent impact wrench should have snapped the bolt by now.

ed

 

my uncle said he would take a look at it, and he did. I told him not to take the caliper halves apart, but he did.... Am I screwed now, can it still go back together and hold the pressure now? I hope so, and we are going to finish the job one way or another saturday, so any info or tips for my current situation would be of great help, thanks...later

 

snap on makes battery powered ones

 

Anyone know?

 

drill it out...get a replacement from autozone or any parts store....send them ur bad core.....btw..remember to put some antiseize on the bolts this time....

 

The heat should of destroyed the locktite. You should only have to use heat if its permanent locktite. I would go to a junkyard and get another side then go to town for if you bust or melt anything you now have spares. The thought of heating is to expand the outside before the inside (bolt) expands also. Also dissimalar metals can weld themselves. Could the shaft of the bolt be frozen and not the threads?