99 s40 rear strut bottom bolt non-removal

[Miketwovolvos]

Thought I would just change the back strut as the spring was broken on my '99 s40 1.6....hours later.....the bottom nut comes off really easily, but the bolt is solidly wedged into the metal sleeve inside the bottom bush of the strut. It is impossible to remove by pressing or hammering with a hammer the size of a small child...All they had to do was stick some coppereaze on the bolt before they inserted it at the factory. Now. assuming it is a hardened steel bolt (m12) I will have to saw through it both sides to get the strut out...have ordered a bolt but what a pain..

[pierremcalpine]

I feel your pain, Mike. I previously had the same issue and scratched my head for quite some time on how to deal with it.

What I ended up doing was the following:

1) take a grinder to the side that previously had the nut in place and grind off the bolt so that it sits flush with the control arm. grind from the bottom up and at a slight angle so that you are slightly grinding away at the control arm too.

2) Then take a socket and breaker bar to the bolt head side and rotate the cut bolt 90deg so that the slightly shorter edge (where you grinded the most of the bolt off) faces downwards. If you have grinded the bolt correctly, you'll see that the bolt sits recessed just slightly in the control arm (i.e. part of the bolt sits deeper in the control arm than the higher edge.

3) Now go around to the other side and cut the head off on the other side of bolt.

4) take an impact hammer with the pointy (pencil) bit on and hit the end where the nut previously and hit the bolt at an angle so that you encourage it to pop out the bottom.

I did all of the above and it worked like a charm and I was able to save the control arm.

Hope that helps?

[bimmer49]

Miketwovolvos: You CAN do all of this off of the car. Take off inner bolt (note the camber positions), remove the outer arm bolt and it will all fall out. Do it on the bench.
As pierre says but this way you cam spread the arm out to prise the shock out of position once cut through. It will all squeeze back together on refit.
Plenty coppaslip is the order of the day.
PS: Ive bought arms complete with shocks (10€ extra) that save a lot of grief, plus they aren't seized up in Spain, no salt you see!

[Miketwovolvos]

both of those suggestions would have worked better than the 7 hour nightmare I ended up enduring..iI just cut the bolt eventually...its a real landmine (one of many) on these cars...I could not get the car high enough to use a power saw..The moral is, you need a proper hoist to work on these cars, as they are so low and a pain to get up so you can work on them. I did take the front control arm off to change the ball joint even though you can theoretically do this on the car..

Thanks guys-I wish lived in Spain or Canada, rather than here in the UK!