So my friend was doing a rear disc swap on his ej1 and when he was trying to take out the trailing arms to put the new ones in and the bolt that goes into the chassis from the trailing arm bushing broke off inside the chassis. We have tried drilling it out everything we can think of. If anyone has an suggestions to get it out it would be much appreciated. Thanks

 

have you tried an ez out extractor?

 

drill a smaller hole into broken bolt, insert extractor, extract. if it does not come out... sol

Was it the bolt that broke or was it the nut that came off inside the chassis?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by dephtone &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">So my friend was doing a rear disc swap on his ej1 and when he was trying to take out the trailing arms to put the new ones in and the bolt that goes into the chassis from the trailing arm bushing broke off inside the chassis. We have tried drilling it out everything we can think of. If anyone has an suggestions to get it out it would be much appreciated. Thanks</TD></TR></TABLE>
Keep drilling.

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by tortis &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">have you tried an ez out extractor? </TD></TR></TABLE>
A stud extractor will only work if the bolt snapped from being overtightened. If the bolt broke because the threads are seized, then an extractor will only break off in the stud and cause major headaches when attempting to drill the remnants out.

 

You're going to have to drill a larg-ish hole into the chassis from the inside of the car to get access to the welded nut that is inside the frame rail where the bolt broke. This will gain you access to either remove the welded on nut with the broken bolt in it, and then use a regular nut with a big washer, or allow you to drill out the bolt more effectively from inside the car. When this happened to me with the toe control link bolt at the front of the trailing arm on my EF hatch, I opened up the frame, and found that the metal that holds the bolt in (it can float for the adjustment). I was able to clamp on some vice grips, get the bolt out of the nut, reshape the metal strap, and put it back together. I then just pop riveted a piece of metal over the hole with some silicone to seal it up.

It's not exactly the same as your problem, but you can maybe get some ideas from this and get yours back together.

 

I have this same EXACT problem, the **** just broke yesterday and today i bought air tools because i figured the uneven stress on the bolt might of snapped it. Let me know what you do dephtone, i havent began to tackle it yet.

 

have any of the above worked for any of you yet? i snapped mine off on the first side im doing... im severely afraid of the other side i havent even started yet. i did snap off a bit extractor in there already, hopefully i will be able to twist it back out. should i just drill the entire thing out, [freak]ing the threads? as for getting to it from inside the car, how do you get in there? i havent had my back seat out at all yet.

 

I ordered some L hand drill bits and im hoping that does the trick, if not im not sure either to be honest. I have a dd so its not as bad, but my dd is ancient. lol.

 

i got my bolt "out." by the way. about 7 hours, 7 beers, and 7 gallons of sweat and blood later. i took my back seat out and tried the drill-into-the-floor technique. its hard to measure exactly where it is, but theres a little mat or something, and its about right on the corner of that on the metal. i ended up having to drill out an enormous hole, like 3x3", because there was no other way to get any leverage in there.

i snapped one extractor bit from the underside... with the top exposed, i had luckily drilled all the way through the bolt, so i put a thin bit in the hole, and tapped the broken extractor tip out. i tried drilling the hole bigger. torching. PB blasting. torching more, and more PB blasting. hoping to god that now the PB is coming from the top, and maybe trickling down the threads ever so slowly. i tried another extractor of the same size. snapped from the underside again. so i tapped it out again. kept drilling. and drilling. and drilling. bigger bits. broken bits. drilling. put a stone grinder tip on there. grinding. more drilling. that [freak]ing bolt is made of some unearthly alloy, because i am using cobalt bits and it seemed like i might as well have been twisting a hot dog down there. finally, somehow, i got it just wide enough, and the new bolt started magically threading in there. i do not know how, and i did not argue. i threaded it all the way in from the top, then back out, then from the bottom all the way up, and back out, just to make sure it was good and threaded. i dont really know how it happened, because the last hour or two was a complete blur of hatred and rage, and i think i was doing assenine and ridiculous things to try to make it work, so it could have been any of them, or any combination. i can thread it all the way in from the bottom, but now that hole is there, im going to put a nut and washer on the top, just in case. i am not sure how those threads are going to hold, or why that bolt even threaded in in the first place, so i will weld a nut on top just to be safe. im doing a complete bushing swap for all new OEM rubbers, since mine are probably all still original... about 15 years and 270000mi old. 3 days, and i just finished the rear passenger side. meaning, i have 3 more to go.

also... this is my dd. i need to buy a beater. most of the time i can get my work done in a couple days and have it on 4 wheels again, but you never anticipate spending this much time on little ****. at least after this, my entire suspension will be brand new, and hopefully i wont have to eff with it anymore.

 

awesome info, im ready to go outside and tackle this now. All of the suspension is off on my ride right now (arms, sway, shocks) and im going to make sure to anti-seize all the important stuff so i never have to deal with snapped fused bolts anymore.

 

oh, yes, i forgot to mention anti-seize. i would anti-seize EVERYTHING down there. i did. all bushing bolts, compensator bolts, trailing arm bolts, even my shock bolts again, though ive done it many times, i always clean every bolt off and put more on every single bolt i take out or replace again. its a good practice to get into. when i took my back seat out, i took the one bolt holding that in out, and the bolt for the seatbelt that was on the floor near where i was drilling the hole. i even cleaned and anti-seized those before i put them back in. because, hey. you never really know what you will have to take out again, or what will get stuck.


Modified by kyalstyle at 7:29 AM 7/10/2008

 

been using the Permatex Anti-Seize for more than 18 years now and it's good stuff, if any of you guys ever come back to the Philippines and stay here for a few years, i would suggest bringing a lot of tubes with you as they don't carry anti-seize here.