Frozen Stuck Strut Bolt Try These Tricks Before Cutting It

Great. The lower strut bushing's spinning. Hey, friends. It's Len here from 1A Auto. So there I was, innocent as can be, getting ready to do a front strut on this truck. And what happens, a bolt is stuck. Now, this is gonna be something that's very common to happen anytime you're working on front end. Now, commonly, when a bolt gets stuck when you're doing something like this, the easiest way to get it out is to go ahead and cut it. Typically you can do that with something that looks like this, a Sawzall. You just go ahead and put it right up against that bolt, and it's gonna do all the work for you. The only problem with that though is now you just cut your bolt. So what are you gonna do? You're gonna have to buy a new bolt. Not everybody has access to a bolt, especially if you've already got the truck apart in the driveway. So I'm gonna go ahead and try to get this strut out of here a different way. Let's get into it. Now, the bolt that I'm having an issue with is the one that holds the strut to the control arm. It just essentially goes right on through this whole entire area. Inside this area right here, of course, you're gonna have a rubber bushing that's on the inside of the shock, and then on the inside of that rubber bushing, there's also a metal bushing and that metal bushing goes right around this bolt. I need to be able to access that metal bushing. So I'm gonna go ahead and cut this out of the way, that way there I have some access and then we'll work at getting the bushing off of there. Now, obviously, once I cut this to start getting into where that inner bushing is, I'm gonna need to go ahead and lower this control arm down. I have a sway bar link that's gonna make that pretty much impossible to do, so I'm just gonna go ahead and take that off. Look around, make sure you don't have anything else around this because what I need to do is go ahead and cut this and then swing the control arm down. Okay. So I got the mounting bolt out of here. Now we're gonna move up to the cam bolts, which are the bolts that hold the control arm to the actual frame of the truck. Just go ahead and loosen those up. So now I have everything loose that's holding up the control arm. The next thing I wanna do is move along here and use my cutting wheel. I'm just gonna cut this metal aspect of my strut. I'm replacing the strut, so I'm not worried about damaging it. Now that I've made my cut, I'm just gonna go ahead and separate that and try to pin this down. Now I'm just gonna pry on this, start separating that. Now, I'm gonna cut off this rubber bushing, get it right out of the way. Now, with the rubber bushing out of the way, that exposes the metal sleeve right here. The next thing that I'm gonna try to do is just heat this up. And once I heat it up, I'm gonna try to give it a couple loving bonks to try to break it free. Okay, so at this point, you can tell that the bolts breaking free from the sleeve. I had just had to heat it up so it was nice and cherry red. If for some reason after you heat it up and it's cherry red, it doesn't wanna continue coming out, you're just gonna have to go ahead and cut that sleeve off of there. And of course, cool down your parts before you go ahead and touch them. Okay, friends, I'm super excited. I got the bolt out, it's still saveable, so I don't have to necessarily go out and get myself another one. And, of course, I got this little metal sleeve here that I can go ahead and recycle by the time I'm done. Aside from that, I'm gonna go ahead and get this strut back in here. Once it's all back together, of course, I'm gonna get myself a full wheel alignment. Now, if you liked the video, please smash on the like button. For me, it would mean the world. If you learned a little something, let me know about it in the comment section below, because I always love to hear from you. Feel free to subscribe and ring the bell. That way there, you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.