1 bolt away from finishing my suspension rebuild...

[InfinityAero]

Hey Guys,

Rebuild has been coming along well-- got the front reassembled and the passenger rear disassembled, driver's rear-- I can't get the shock bolt at the bottom to push through. I was able to get the nut off, and the bolt will turn. There's not quite enough space to use my tie-rod separator (shock itself blocks it) or C-clamp to push it through, and using a BFH isn't doing the trick either. On the other side I removed the two 14mm nuts that hold on the shock mount at the bottom, but one of the nuts on the this side is stripped, and almost completely inaccessible anyways. I cut the spring and was able to get that removed... but removing this shock is giving me a headache.

I'm thinking a few options:
1) Use a sacrificial 14mm long socket and epoxy it to the stripped nut, use that to remove it
2) Cut the shock right at its base (hopefully below the area containing gas!) so I can use the tie rod separator to push the bolt through
3) Try to drill out the stripped 14mm stud from above

Any suggestions? I've got new springs and shocks to install, and can get a new shock bolt, so no worries on damaging the existing equipment... just need to get the damn thing out.

[spider2081]

I have run into this problem a few times when changing shocks. I use a 41/2 inch cut off wheel, cut straight up from the bottom. The exposed wheel is just long enough to cut through the bolt on both sides of the shock. The remaining pieces fall out of the lower control arms.
Just install new bolt with new shock

[DieselSpider]

Air powered cut off, small angle grinder, hammer the next size smaller 1/2 inch drive socket onto the nut so you can insert an extension and then bend it off, hammer and chisel, air chisel, big vice grips, nut-splitter, sawzall or other brute force method of choice. We need to have a number of these weapons against old frozen fasteners in our arsenals.

[PatTroy]

Yeah went through all of this doing a complete overhaul on my car before going racing. It's brutal. Took two 8 hour days to get everything sorted.

My go to was the air hammer. If you can get the point of the hammer on the fastener and put something heavy on the backside of the tab (small sledge to prevent it from flexing away from the air hammer blow) you can usually power these out, but I think I did resort to cutting one of them.

[InfinityAero]

Hey Guys, thanks for the advice! I ended up sawing off the eye of the shock, then sawing the bolt off on both sides. Got it all re-assembled... here's a couple pics:

[PatTroy]

NICE! That blue colour is really nice!