The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk Frozen/rusted bolts

I've read tech tips on bolt removal. Knowing that the rear fender bolts on my burb stand a good chance of breaking off, I'm thinking maybe I could heat them up with my mig welder first. I'm not looking forward to breaking all of them off then using the tech tip method! I have sprayed them with PB blaster, and in my first attempt to remove a bolt it broke off. Anybody else use the heat first method, got any pointers? Thanks, Phil

No pointers. I think I only got TWO bolts out on my panel. The rest of them twisted into with ease. Heat may help you but don't look for it to be the proverbial silver bullet.

How can you heat bolts with a MIG welder? I've used an acetyline torch, and even a little Propane torch on small areas, but I can't imagine how a wire welder would do any heating without piling up a huge mess of metal in the process. I'd suggest giving the bolts a good warm-up with a torch, and a liberal squirt of Kroil, then heating again after a few days before trying to turn them.
Jerry

Jerry, my plan is to mig weld a bolt/rod to the head of the frozen bolt, and the heat generated by welding might free up the bolt? At least I'll have something to weld to. I can also apply additional heat with my acetylene torch. I'll report back with the results on monday.

If you've got acetyline available, skip all the hassle of trying to spot anything onto the seized bolt. Just get out the Victor hot wrench and get 'em warm! A small heating tip like a #0 or a #1 and a needle-point flame can be controlled very nicely to just heat the bolt without doing much damage to the surrounding area.
Jerry

With no gas I went with the mig route. I found for smaller screws assorted screw bits worked great and they were cheap expendable and easy to weld. For larger bolts nuts worked better. Just make sure you really weld it on good as that seemed to be the level of heat required to break things free.

The bad news, 1 for 20! So now I've got 19 broken bolts to remove. I'm thinking I might just cut out the cage nuts and weld in new nuts? The good news the rear fenders have rust but not rusted through!! Also the right side inner fender well is not rusted through, can't say the same for left side but enough metal to work with. I can't beleive how much dirt can collect inside those quarter panels!! Just think some of it is almost 60 years old.

I feel for ya Yakima
New nuts or new cages? I know you can get them but don't remember where, I made a couple up when I needed them bit I'd be buying a box if I was looking at
20 per side

personaly i have found that if i get a frozen up bolt basicaly red hot they seem to come out like butter. problem is that this is not always an option.

yakimabowtie, remember, I only got TWO out so I win

Sorry to hear that. I was hoping you'd have better luck. I was lucky. The guy who did my body work for me looked at the situation, laughed and say "no problem". I told him to have at it. He did do a nice job and replaces alot of metal. I hope you have great success.

Update & correction, there are only 18 "cage" nuts on the rear fenders. In the process of removing the fenders I did break off 17 bolts. On the left side three cage nuts are completely rusted out. I was able to remove 7 bolts with using this method, I took a 1/4" steel rod and grind the end to a pencil point. I was able to weld the tip to frozen bolt. The remaining bolts are to recessed to reach, so I'm going to try and drill them out. Maybe this will help someone else, just hang in there, and keep working at it!

Sorry I live in Arizona and this might be a stupid question, what are frozen bolts?

Frozen bolts is just another way of saying you can't undo the nut from a bolt once it has been rusted; it's frozen in place. Or simply it's stuck!

I wasn't as lucky removing the rear fenders from my Panel. They were so badly rusted I think I snapped all but one bolt.