I have a bad oil leak and in trouble shooting it found that one of the oil pan studs, near the transmission has been stripped. The nut spins but does not loosen, nor tighten. So question #1 how do I get that nut off? again, it spins in both directions but doesn't tighten nor loosen, it's like a washer on a bolt, it just spins around. Question #2 once the nut is off, can that stud be replaced? Or does it need to be re-threaded?

 

You can grab the end of the stud with vise grips and try and remove both nut and stud at the same time.

Or put another nut on the stud and try to tighten it. You'll be using the bad nut as a washer.

If you can get both out, just put a bolt back in.

 

I thought about that accept that the nut is on in such a way that it is flush with the end of the stud. So all we can get ahold of is the nut. The nut is 1/4 to 1/8 of an inch away from the oil pan. We've tried to use a pair of vice grips and a ton of downward force to see if we could get the threads of the nut to catch and then we would force it off, but that didn't happen.

 

Seems like you're looking for an easy way out rather than the way you know you'll end up having to do it. Since that's the case, I'll give you a bit of a suggestion and maybe it will work. Because it probably won't, I'll also give you the final solution.

1.) you can try slotting the end of the nut/stud with a dremel so that you can get a large flathead screwdriver into the notch and remove the entire nut/stud that way.

2.) if the above doens't work, you'll have to cut the nut away from the stud and drop the oil pan so that you can use vice grips to get the remainder of the stud out of the bottom of the block. Sucks, but that's life.

Also, the speaker of the quote in your sig. is spelled "Ignignot".

 

If you have access to air try knocking the nut out that way, if it spins fast enough then it should come off. If you dont have access to air have someone prying down on the oil pan while your spinning the nut, should come off. After that grab some vise grips and take out the stud. When putting the stud back on put to nuts on the new studs, hand tight it then torque it down. Good luck.

 

I'll see about getting a dremmel to that nut and cutting a slot into the stud. Does anyone know what kind of torque might be on that stud? Oil pan bolts are torqued to 9 ft lbs, so I'd assume that the studs are a little more, perhaps 12 - 15 ft lbs. I ask that so I can guage how deep the slot would have to be.

And thanks for the spelling correction