Well, poop. (Broken bolt content)

Trying to remove the last of the crusted, rusted suspension and brake parts from my SVT Focus has been the most frustrating, knuckle bustin', cursin' like a sailor experience of my life. Not one darn bolt has came off the rear suspension and I'm not exaggerating. I've broken a lot of bolts, sockets and cut off wheels.

To my point. I broke three out of four rear hub bolts off the other night in a fit of rage. I tried soaking in PB Blaster for three nights and then heating with my propane torch with no success. My Hong Kong special electric impact gun was able to break free one by some miracle, but I gave up on the other three and somewhat purposefully sheared the other three with a breaker bar. Looking back now I wish I wouldn't have done that.

See the pictures. What are my options? I want to sell these parts, but if I leave the broken bolts in place, the #yoloswag Focus brahs will lowball me. I'm think drill out and re tap may be my only option. The other side bolts are still in-situ, so is there another approach I should take when I attempt to remove those bolts?

Jeez, is that what it's like to live up north? I've removed stuff from cars from the 60s that have been in a field for 20 years with less hassle.

Anything other than drill and tap might be more hassle that the part is worth. Might could try soaking the whole thing in something.

This is life up north. I grew up working on Charlotte, NC cars and is why this car got parted, and my new car is from Charlotte.

First, file the top of the broken bolts flat. That will make it easier to centerpunch the exact center of the bolt before you start drilling. Start with a pilot hole, then work up to larger drills until you get the majority of the bolt out - ideally, all that will be left is the threads.

Those bolts never come out without heat persuasion.

Question, and feel free to call me a dumbass because I don't know the Focus specialty market, but those appear to hold the wheel bearings. Why the effort to save a wear item?

RoughandReady wrote: Jeez, is that what it's like to live up north? I've removed stuff from cars from the 60s that have been in a field for 20 years with less hassle.

It's not quite so bad. You generally don't wrench on badly rusty things as an enthusiast, because you can make money selling rusty crap to someone else who would be glad to have it and thinks they're getting a deal, then go down south and buy something for 1/3-1/2 of what you sold the rusted junk for. But you have to be willing to travel (not always a bad thing) and you have to plan ahead for a lot of things.

Those bolts hold the hubs to the trailing arms.

I'm afraid those hubs are worth about $25 per ton.

Actually they're not. SVT hubs are extremely sought after.

Weld a nut onto the stub of the bolt. The heat from the weld will often break the rust bond. Repeat as needed.

That'd not bee too hard to drill if you had access to a milling machine so you could get spot-on centered on the broken bolts. Use left hand drills and goes up in sequential sizes. The last one often spins the shell of the fastener out.

I want to sell these parts

LOOOOOOOL.

Well then you done goofed. How much is your time worth? If it's worth less than what you will get out of these parts after sinking your time into them undoing your own impatience, then i guess you could keep going, but my guess is that you are just massively undervaluing your time here. If someone will give you ANY money at all for those parts in perfect condition i would take it and laugh all the way to the..gas station i guess.

If you plan to keep doing this stuff, spend your next "profit" on a real torch set, because that's about the only way you're going to be able to avoid this in the future if you keep working on stuff that looks like absolute dog E36 M3. Propane is good for some things but with parts like that you need to see glowing orange and propane will not get anything large that hot. Or, if you cant swing a good torch set, buy a sawzall and cut off whatever your rusty parts are attached to and let the bolts be the next sucker's problem.

In reply to Vigo:

Considering the rear brake conversion goes for 300 or so, it's worth my time.

Also, anything I could cut with my saws all has already been cut.

I'm guessing the SVT hubs have the required mounting points for larger brakes, hence their value?

In reply to Ian F:

Correct.

To all the southerners: those parts are exactly what we expect from a car that's spent its entire life in the north. We just hit it with a wire wheel and a little paint. Its not "really rusty" until it collapses under its own weight.

+1 on welding a nut to the stub.

Knurled wrote: Those bolts never come out without heat persuasion.

Unless you live in the south. I'm not joking; I had to remove the same part from my car last fall and I don't even remember using my breaker bar. I have never had to use a torch to remove something off of mine.

This is what the underside of my car looks like:

In reply to Mitchell:

Or a northern car that is never driven in snow/salt. My ex's '97 M3 looked like that when I worked on it. She was/is deathly afraid of RWD in the snow, so as soon as the first hint of snow was in the air the car was parked until spring. Valid fear or not, it did keep the underside clean.

Even my '72 GT6 is essentially like that. The car has pretty much always been a w/e toy since the late 70's, and given the condition probably since new.

Weld a nut on. DO NOT USE A WIRE WELDER. They aren't strong enough. Use a stick welder. 3 seconds at a time. Weld - then cool. Weld then cool. Then use an acetylene torch until the housing is cherry red and work the nut back and forth.

Wayslow wrote: Weld a nut onto the stub of the bolt. The heat from the weld will often break the rust bond. Repeat as needed.

This. If you don't own a Mig welder now is a good time to invest in one. (or find a friend that has one. I don't know where you are but if you are in the metro Boston area I have one and we could give it a try.

f6sk wrote: DO NOT USE A WIRE WELDER. They aren't strong enough.

Wait, what?

Other than that iffy piece of advice, he's right. Weld something on there. The heat loosens things and the new nut (you weld the inside of it if you can) make it turnable again.

The problem with using a MIG is that it is difficult to weld into a hole like that, the wire will weld to the sides without really sticking to the end of the bolt.

What I have been known to do is drill out all but one thread of a nut, so I can build up on the end of the broken bolt before I start attaching it to the nut. Sometimes it even works.

Mitchell wrote: Unless you live in the south. I'm not joking; I had to remove the same part from my car last fall and I don't even remember using my breaker bar. I have never had to use a torch to remove something off of mine.

I have tried to remove those bolts from 6 month old cars and they didn't want to come out.

The way you are supposed to remove the drum is to unbolt the spindle from the arm instead of removing the bearing nut. The bolts, however, are apparently tri-lobed and Loctited.

The bearing nut is one time use only as is the cap. Well, technically one time use only. I've re-used a bunch of 'em. The torque is something like 189ft-lb, in a low stress application, it lives just fine.

Will be heading over to the neighbor's tonight to see if he has a welder of any variety. If not, I may invest in a cheap-o HF flux yeah welder. We'll see.

I own an HF flux core welder and it won't do what you're trying to do without a lot of pre-heat on the part (i.e. good torch).

Torch can make up for a weak welder in a lot of cases if you pre-heat the part and then weld it. I've done that with smaller parts using propane/mapp gas torches to heat the part before welding.

The crappy thing about MIG is that you cant put heat into the part without putting wire on it, and until the part is hot enough that wire will not stick, it will just pile up in a big E36 M3ty mess that is now in your way. Those are the times when pre-heating becomes very useful.