Well Ralph I feel responsible in a way, for your buying the big impact. If that dint do the job then you’re the one in a hundred. Although it will come in handy if your gonna keep working on old trucks, just wait till ya work on the springs. Anyway, it was a good excuse to add a new tool to your box of tricks, right?
If you rounded off the nut using the proper sizes 6-point socket, then it doesn't matter whether you used the Earthquake, a breaker bar with pipe or whatever, it still would have rounded that nut off. The only thing that might have helped, (If you ever run into it again) would have been to heat the nut up and soak it before you tried to remove it. All that said there are some fasteners that are so badly rusted that nothing is going to help and the only way to get them off is by doing what you did in the end, cutting it off.
If your working on the ground up on jack stands then it’s darn near impossible to break one of these loose with a long bar, there just isn’t enough room to swing it with a 6-point socket unless you using a real beefy ratchet and even then you only have a few degrees of swing. If you’re up on a lift, well then you have a chance with a breaker, but in the end, the majority of those pinion nut will spin right off using a 3/4” impact without even blocking the wheels.
Don’t even bother replacing the seal unless you put a Handy Sleeve in. their cheap and if the nut was rusted on as bad as you say then you can bet the yoke is scored.
Handy tip Richard, that would be nice to hide somewhere in our Tech Tips, the math couldn’t be copywrited. Still gonna have problems with the limited movement when working on your back off jack stands.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
