Tips for removing broken floor pan bolt

[Dave_in_Texas]

Guys-

I'm doing my floor pans now and when I went to remove the bolt that holds the pan to the frame, it broke! As luck would have it, it broke just below the frame so I can't grip it with anything else. I actually was never able to turn the bolt, so it must be rusted pretty good to the side.

Has this happened to anyone else? Any tips out there?

Thanks,

Dave

 

[Salgood]

I feel your pain. I used a sawzal to cut my floors out......a plasma cutter would be ideal but $$$$. I would get the floor out first and then soak a ton of WD40 in the thing and maybe try a self tapping screw meant to pull out busted bolts.....

Or you could just cut that portion of frame out and replace;D ;D ;D - thats a joke!!!

 

[trailpsycho]

Maybe I am not understaning exactly what the problem is....if it broke, can you drive it down using a punch? If not, yes a sawzall is a common solution for replacing the body mounts....even if you can get the bolts out the sleeve is usually frozen to the steel bushings and they have to be sawzalled out. If the bolts still in there, then it will just take a little longer. Good luck. Its all part of the initiation.

 

[302fix]

yup psycho is righ, just drive it through.


I ended up drilling about 6 holes in the bottom of the bushing and ripping the bushing and metal piece off the bottom with vice grips. From there I drove the bolt up through the floor board hole.

 

[Dave_in_Texas]

Good ideas. Looks like I'll try some of them out tonight.

Dave

 

[grant_71]

Its just a body mount, feel free to be destructive...my favorite is to pull it outside, light it up with the heat wrench and stand by with a beer and fire extinguisher

Grant

 

[bigmuddy]

I went and bought a looong punch and just beat on them till they fell out. works every time!

Ben

 

[A4x4Junky]

Sawzall on mine. Broke when I tried to take it out and got sick of hammer and punch not working. Cut through the bolt and took all of 2 mins tops.

Good Luck

Anthony

 

[302fix]

I think I may have been off base with previous advice.
The front two locations you can pound out with a punch but the back two locations are on top of the frame and need a little more persuasion if the head breaks off the bolt.
Again I drilled out the bushing until I could get them off. Then I used a sawzall to cut the bolt so it could be removed from underneath.