tannerp89

or you can drill and tap for new bolts....

shooter5635

what size hole should you drill and tap size should you use?

sems

The easiest way I found to repair the broken rear shock bolts is to:
Use a hammer and a punch, and hit where the broken bolt is (this will knock out the welded nuts inside the "crossmember" area). Then get some new bolts - and fish them through the holes from the areas cut out in the crossmember. I used fishing line and tied it to the bolt to fish it through. Then put a nut on the bottom side and tighten. Now you have a "stud" where the old bolt was, and just use washers and nuts to install the new shock. It took me literally 30 minutes, and you will never run into that problem again.

Build is looking great!!

bluedragon436

^^^+1!!! That is what I am planning on doing when it comes time for my lift... I am not cutting a useless hole in my floor if I don't have too.. I am def. scribin' to this thread though... for the use of tools to make some removals easier... and so I can comntinue to watch it as it progresses!!!

sanchezcruz_20

Thanks for the input guys. Looks like I have a couple options.

I like the dill-and-tap and the punch-and-fish ideas a lot better than cutting up the floor.

Drill-and-tap appears to be the least labor intensive and I may try that route first and see what I get. Looks like I will be visiting the hardware store for a tap and die set.

If I'm not successful tapping the hole, I will try just drilling a big old hole and fishing a bolt through it.

Last resort will be cutting the floor. I will keep you posted.

razor02097

The least labor intensive is definitely knocking out the nuts and fishing bolts through. That is what I did. I broke off the bolts with a 1/4" ratchet! I thought to use the smaller ratchet to prevent breaking the bolts.... I guess they are made of butter or something

Good project you are making a whole lot of progress

leo3000

good looking write up!!

keep up the good work

sanchezcruz_20

yeah, those bolts snapped off so easy, I was very surprised. Granted, I was using a 1/2'' drive ratchet but gimme a break... those bolts might as well been made of play-doh.

I see what you are saying though. But, I'm concerned about a couple things with the punch-and-fish method. First, I'd have to figure out how to get the bolt fished through there... I haven't inspected it too good, but there doesn't appear to be that much room up there to be sliding a bolt around. Secondly, how do you tighten a nut down to a bolt that you can't get a wrench on?

I'll take a closer look at it when I get home from work.

razor02097

pretty easy, use a bolt and lock washer this prevents the bolt from turning once tightened. If your worried about it rusting up you can use anti seize or red locktite. You can always use a nut splitter later if you really have issues.

Fishing it up there you can use a magnet on the antenna dealie you can get them from HF or auto zone for a few bucks or do what I did and use a string. Fish the string through and tie it on the threads. Pull the string and bingo was his name-o

offroadnut36

or you could tape the nut to the open end of a wrench, find the hole, thread the bolt and you're golden.

truckntractorhick

awesome!

bsflipfrontflip

Ok you had a few questions that were over looked.

Grease from the front drive shaft:
The yoke on the drive shaft the connects to the axle slides up and down on the drive shaft on splines. For this reason you must have grease there to allow for it slide with ease it normally moves when you flex. Now when you removed the lower control arms it allowed to axle to roll and moved the yoke up on the drive shaft and cause the grease to be pushed out but don't worry it is completely normal.

The pop noise on the rear drive shaft:
When a axle moves the drive shaft has to be able to extend and compress to allow for a smooth ride in the front its on the drive shaft on the rear it slides at the tail end of the transfer case housing. So it slides in and out of the transfer case but if you lower to axle too much it can pop off the tail end of the housing and most likely that's what happened. The bigger the lift the more likely you are for this to happen during driving. You can do a slip yoke eliminator kit or known as SYE it just moves the slip from the transfer case to the drive line, like in the front. Now at 4.5 inches its not necessary but you would notice a difference in the amount of drive line vibrations. All owners opinion.

but props for doing what you have with what you have also anther point i cant tell you how many times i have seen people get on here and ask how to remove the stud for the sway bar links good job for figuring it out

sanchezcruz_20

Thank you for answering those questions, I do appreciate it. I'm a novice mechanic at best, but I'm learning a great deal by going out to the garage and getting my hands dirty (well, I use gloves but you get the point).

When an issue arises, I try my best to search for a solution, oftentimes that solution is found right here on the forum. What a useful resource. This is especially true for tonight's update.

sanchezcruz_20

Alright guys, good news.

I attempted the punch-and-fish method for the top bolts that anchor the rear shocks to the unibody/frame/crossmember.... and it worked great.

First things first though, safety. I knew I was gonna be laying on my back hammering away so I went one step further than plain-jane safety glasses and brought home some full face surgical masks from work. This way, my eyes AND mouth weren't getting loaded up with rust/dirt/metal shards/etc.

Stylish huh?


So this is what I started with, snapped the heads right off the bolts:


I went out to Harbor Freight and picked me up a small set of punches for $4.99 - http://www.harborfreight.com/hand-to...set-93111.html

While I was there, I went ahead and bought some "mechanic's wire" - http://www.harborfreight.com/25-ft-m...ire-97773.html - I just happened to be walking by and saw it, thought it would work great for a fish wire. Only $.99!

Next stop was Lowes. Bought some grade 8 5/16x1.5'' bolts, lock washers and nuts.

First thing to do was wind the wire around the threads on the bolt as shown here:


I've actually used fish wire before when I installed a hitch on my car so this was familiar territory but I never had to assemble it. The mechanic's wire worked out great.

Here are my tools laid out, hammer, punch and a bolt on fish wire.


Punching out the broken bolts is pretty simple, line 'em up and hammer away until they back out. I'll be honest though, it didn't happen as fast as I was expecting. Some of the write-ups I read acted like it would only take a couple wacks, I guess that all depends on how hard you are hammering away, how heavy your hammer is, how badly seized/corroded/rusted your bolts are and so on. It took me about 30 mins of pounding to release all 4. Not bad at all I guess. The most difficult part was finding the best positioning under the car to hold the punch steady and still wack it good with the hammer.

Here's a little shot of me lining it up after punching one through:


Once you've opened the holes, just fish the wire from the access port through the hole and pull the bolt behind it. This is not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be once I located the access port. Yesterday, when I snapped the bolts off I hadn't really even looked that far up under the Jeep.

Here's what it looks like to fish the wire through the hole before pulling the bolt behind:


Then just gently maneuver it through the hole:


This is all the further I got tonight, will have to finish up tomorrow but wanted to get you guys an update. All is going well, thanks for the input/ideas.

The only thing I'm going to do before bolting the shocks in is possibly get some larger washers, I feel like the hole is a little too large for the size of bolt/washer I'm using. Probably not, but it'll make me feel better.

sanchezcruz_20

Had a little time to do some work tonight, haven't had much time the last few days with work and other projects around the house.

Since I'm pretty satisfied with the solution for the rear shocks I decided to move on to removing the factory leaf springs.

The driver side front bolt came out without fuss but I was not able to separate the spring from the shackle at the rear. Initially, I had not planned on uninstalling the shackles since my lift kit does not come with replacement units. But I decided to do it in hopes that I would be able to remove the spring from the shackle with better access. Unfortunately, the shackle is putting up a good fight.



It's bathing in PB Blaster right now and I'll give it another try tomorrow.

The passenger side shackle also put up a little fight, but once I got it off the car I was able to coax it off the spring. However, the front rear spring bolt was a gigantic PITA.

It backed out partially then refused to back out the remainder of the way. I came to find out that it had cleared the welded nut but the metal sleeve had seized onto the bolt preventing it from passing through the hole in the unibody. I had to get aggressive and the bolt finally responded to the sawzall. I had to cut it on both sides of the spring eye and it finally dropped out.



So after a little shackle removal and sawzall persuasion the leaf springs finally gave up:



and here's a pic of some of the hardware:




Notice the seized on metal sleeve around the bolt. Sucks!

Final product, no shocks, no springs.



Tomorrow I'll be working on separating the shackle from the leaf spring.