What's in the workshop this week?

[MikkiJayne]

Big Red properly kicked my arse tonight, for the first time in this project. Pinch bolt time...

The first one thwarted all normal methods to get it out, so on to the extreme solution.

Cut the head off the bolt at the first arm, and prep a half-washer



Push the half washer in to the slot by the nut - it has to be a tight fit to avoid breaking the strut with what we're about to do next. Yes, I cut the control arms off. They were scrap, and in the way



grease up the thread and stick a couple of chunky washers on the bolt and put the nut back on



The theory at this point is that you start tightening up the nut and the force pulls the remains of the bolt out of the hole. Until tonight this technique had never failed me. This time the bolt snapped in the hole No amount of force in the vice would move it, nor would the air hammer. Time to drill it out.

So, made up a 4mm pilot bushing



and started drilling



once I'd got a good pilot hole started I moved up to a 10mm drill



After the 10mm got a fair way in I put it in the pillar drill to go the rest of the way through. I couldn't get a pic of that since I needed both hands.

This is the stump which remained



2 hours to get one damn bolt out I'm expecting the same with the other side tomorrow.

After that I made a tool to remove ABS sensors. One of Big Red's is bad, and I have two spare on my FE which I'm not using since that's getting alloy struts instead of the depleted uranium 20" versions.

Start with some thick-wall alloy tube



Turn it down to 17.5mm - just smaller than the sensor



Trim to length



Complete



This is how it works