Please Please Help Required with Suspension Strut Bolt

[POLOZ]

Wonder if somebody can help me out! I am trying to remove my strut bar and so far I have been able to remove all three bolts of the four holes....but one bolt doesn't seem to come out no matter what I do.

I have used WD40..etc to lubricate it but it still wont free itself. The bolt is rotating alright but not unwinding itself. Tried tapping it with a hammer but no luck wotsoever

Please advice

[RITCHAT]

Sounds very much like you have stripped the threads on the bolt. you will no doubt have to drill this baby out and retap the threads before replacing the bolt.

[POLOZ]

As shown in the pic, the oily nut also rotates with the bolt......:@ dont know how????



So whenever I try to unwind the bolt the nut also moves accordingly

Will it be safe to drive the car with one bolt lose???????????

[RITCHAT]

Have you tried a pair of mole grips to lock on the nut and when you try to loosen the bolt the mole grips should then jam and enable you to get the offending bolt out, you may need long nose mole grips. Or you could use a spanner to jam in the area the bolts aren't tightened up that much so you should be able to get it off. To be honest I would drill it out and put in a new bolt and nylon thread lock nut on to replace the old one.

[RUM4MO]

These nuts are meant to be captive in the top mounting, one thing you might want to try is to grab it with mole grips as suggested, then try to retighten it, if you can do that okay, then try to clean up the exposed thread with a wire brush and put more WD-40 on it then try and remove it again - repeating this until you have unwound the bolt completely or have raised it enough to cut the head off it. Then what you should really do is replace this top mount. What happens is the exposed end of the bolt gets covered with water and salt so it corrodes - which means it "grows" - you would have got it out okay I'd think, if you used the WD-40 before you had a problem and tried loosening<>tightening a few times until the bolt comes out without too much torque being applied.

[POLOZ]

These nuts are meant to be captive in the top mounting, one thing you might want to try is to grab it with mole grips as suggested, then try to retighten it, if you can do that okay, then try to clean up the exposed thread with a wire brush and put more WD-40 on it then try and remove it again - repeating this until you have unwound the bolt completely or have raised it enough to cut the head off it. Then what you should really do is replace this top mount. What happens is the exposed end of the bolt gets covered with water and salt so it corrodes - which means it "grows" - you would have got it out okay I'd think, if you used the WD-40 before you had a problem and tried loosening<>tightening a few times until the bolt comes out without too much torque being applied.

Cheers RUM4MO for your advice! Well i wasn't able to get the thing off plus it is pissing over here.

Will be buying a new top mount on monday anyway also will it be okay to drive the car around as I need it for work tomorrow.....the other two are tight enough and plus the other one is not that lose as well.....

[RUM4MO]

I'd think that you will need just to trust its okay and take it easy - or maybe try to retighten it tomorrow as you will need to do something to it to change that bolt and mount, also replace all 6 of these bolts as they are meant to be use once items and anyway they all have rusted up a bit and they are cheap - I sprayed Waxoil on all of mine after changing the front springs as I had noticed that some of them tend to rust in. Also you will probably need to buy a new top mount bearing and a new nyloc nut for the strut rod. I see that you, like many others, have found that most "5 min" jobs on these little cars tend to turn into "5 hour" jobs - I thought that changing a front spring would only take an hour or so, with all the rusted and soft bolts that I found, it probably took "a day or two" by the time I bought all the extra tools, parts and tap and die set!

[RITCHAT]

How right are you with the quote it will be a five minute job, aye right! Unfortunately as you have stated what looks like a five minute job very often turns into the nightmare of a job. I always buy the relevant nuts and bolts for the job wether or not I need them just in case one strips or shears on me. Changing the hubs over when I did the brake conversion from standard to gti spec on the front was a nightmare couldn't get a socket with a thin enough wall to get them off and when I did get one from the lads at budget it turned out that the nut on the passenger side was about 35 mm and not the staandard 36mm and left me with a problem and I thought the job would take 20 mins each side not a chance 4 hours later and many swear words said before I was back on the road again. Thankfully the rear disc conversion was a doddle as I had the whole suspension beam and struts with the braking system in place so was straight forward to do and the springs were upgarded to gti spec at the same time.

Another five minute job was the front fog lights, christ man it was a pain the instructions were in german! easy enough to understand due to the pictures thankfully, but the last wire is meant to go through the bulk head and into the back of the electronic board for the dash and the other wire connects from the opposite side but the dash has to come of to get to the relevant hole. My answer to that was stuff that! all just so I could have the light on the dash come on to remind me that I have my fog lights on. No chance it has gone through the front inner wing and the other end has come out the car and under the door seal to be connected. The lights work and that will do me not spending a day stripping the dash out and the bulkhead down for a warning light when the light switch shows green when the fog lights are on.

[RUM4MO]

RITCHAT, when I had to replace a front spring, it was New Year (broke on New Year's morning!), so the choice of places for getting extra tools was a bit grim! The socket, I got at my local car parts place - just luck and even luckier that it seemed to be (just) thin enough to get on to the hub nut - oh and at that time no one had posted what this nut size was - so I was desperate and guessed - and guessed right. What really got me grumpy (drinking heavily then a few hours later needing to bend down is never going to work), was that the TRE swivel started to rotate as I was taking the nyloc nut off and the only way to sort that was to go and buy the next size up to what I had nut splitter - when that failed I had to go around the nyloc nut with a hack saw cutting the nyloc section off in about four or so bits - plan was to just whack on any old metric nut with Loctite until I could buy some more parts - not so thread size was not the "standard" thread size - then on to the next problem, spring compressors were not long enough to handle these tapered springs - two new sets of compressors later spring was off - horrible job start to finish!

[RITCHAT]

I changed the track rod ends when I did the upgrades, Just as well as they were spinning like nobodies business and the play was shocking. I went down to good old Arnold Clark and got the track rod ends which they had in stock but didn't have the nuts in stock. Now why do VW not supply the tre's with the damn nuts which have to be replaced as nylock type? 25 mile round trip up to Glasgow later.

TYpical Vw 5MIN JOB turns to 4 hours of hassle before getting the job complete.

[RUM4MO]

Now why do VW not supply the tre's with the damn nuts which have to be replaced as nylock type? 25 mile round trip up to Glasgow later.

That bit beggars belief - but that seems to be VAG's way of doing things.