The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk door panel clutch heads

every clutch head screw on the door panel is rusted and fused into place. what will be my best option? drilling? retapping? i would like to remove to clean out the several inches of dirt and seat fluff that is trapped at door bottom.

Do you have finish paint on the door? If you can repaint then use a small torch tip(like 00) to keep the heat on just the head of the bolt. Heat to very red and let cool, then heat to a dull red a second time and they will break loose nearly everytime. This is definitely hard on clutch head screwdrivers but you can grind them back several times before you have to can them. If finish painted you can try the various rust busters(we like Aero Kroil), or as a last resort you can roll the window down, block the drains, and maybe get them soaked with plain old water for several days. This is the way we get frozen brake drums off and it works very well. Water turns the rust to slime and kills it's holding power. The only thing is if you got all that gunk wet thats in the door bottoms you would HAVE to get them cleaned out. One last tip, if the clutch heads strip you can cut a groove for a slot head screwdriver with one of the thin high speed cut off blades. Good luck.

Most of my screws where rusted also, I used my cut off tool and put a straight groove in it, then used a manual impact driver to loosen them up. I planed on replacing the screws anyway so it was not much of a loss. Hope this helps.

Ed

Try putting the tip in the head, then whack it with a hammer a couple times (like you'd hit a chisel). That often frees up small fasteners (like philips heads on trim, door sill trim, etc.)
An impact driver also works very well.
And just to be sure, you are using a dedicated Clutch head screwdriver, aren't you? I've known a ton of people who try to get by with a straight blade in the clutch head. That'll make a huge difference.
I'm fortunate, in that I have a 3-screwdrive set of clutch-head drivers (One old Snap-on, two bought new off the truck a couple years ago for a very reasonable price), and an impact driver with a 3/8-drive socket end. The bits I put on it are made for ratchets--and I have one clutch-head screwdriver bit for a 3/8-inch ratchet.
The impact driver has saved my bacon more times than I can count. Most recently, it took care of the philips fasteners on the barn door slides/latches for my '62 Suburban. I'd have been drilling out the old and buying new hardware store fasteners without that impact driver.
-Brad

I tap the screwdriver while puting inward and turning pressure at the same time.On the most stubourn ones i put a vice grip on thr driver to turn with one hand and used the other hand for inward pressure and had a helper tap the driver.Only had to grind one on a complete dissasemly

http://www.stovebolt.com/bboard/cgi-bin//ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=9;t=000304#000000

Yup, that's exactly what I did but I used a hand held, hammer driven impact driver to get them loose afterwards. THIS WORKS!