Strut insert removal advice

[sheetsofsound]

Anyone got any suggestions for this?

Both of them are rusted as h*ll. I've been soaking them for a couple of days in penetrating oil and tried removing them with a bar about 18" long. I'm worried about rounding the nut. Any tricks with this?

[REPLIC8]

Lots of heat on the strut tube.

[UKPhilTR7]

Oh my gosh that looks well in there. I have not seen one that bad before. Good luck with that.

I alos think that heat is the way to go.

[sonscar]

If you are renewing the inserts you will get new nuts.There may be I staked dimple to drill out that secures the existing nut and you get new nuts with the inserts(usually).Secure the tube and use large hammer and chisel to remove.Good fettling,Steve...

[FI Spyder]

Oh boy! You are going to need everything going for you. heat the tube with torch to expand it, blast of cold Freeze It (or similar) to shrink the nut.

http://www.arctic-products.co.uk/products/professional-chemicals/crack-it-shock-freeze-release-spray/

Get some impact on it hammer and chisel or hammer on the wrench, drill the dimple (if you can find it under that rust). These have been mentioned, use them all.

A good dose of patience and perseverance, me Mom would call it stubbornness.

[sheetsofsound]

Ok. All will get tried tonight, time permitting.

The car it came off had major rust in the turrets. It was my first TR7 and I had no idea how unsafe it was to drive. The PO had bondo-ed the shock tower and had the whole car completely resprayed. It looked fantastic. The gaiter was torn at the top, making a perfect catch basin, filling with water and pooling around the nut.

[seven]

Be careful if you are going to heat it as the oil does expand. I took my strut to the engineers to ask them to heat up mine and they refused point blank. Said it would explode
I have heated them up in the past and not had any problems, though I didn't heat it till red hot

[saabfast]

Maybe I was lucky. I put the strut in a large engineering vice and used a pair of 12" Stillsons (pipe wrench) with about 2' of tube over the end. They seemed to come undone more easily that I thought they would.

[sheetsofsound]

So far no luck, although I haven't tried freezing it yet. I heated it with no adverse effects, but I am nervous to try it again after reading the above post. I have put it in a vise and got some torque on it, but to no avail. There are no dimples to drill out; too much rust. The pipe wrench idea I will try next. Right now its soaking in penetrating oil..again. Some more.

[Hasbeen]

That dimple is not all that large. It is actually small enough to be hard to find under the paint in a rust free strut. All struts have [or had them] ex factory. Perhaps if you gave them a clean up with a light wire brush, it would become obvious.

We recently shouted the 8 a new set of adjustable gas inserts. It was recently restored when we bought it 12 years ago. We found a drill hole, filled with some epoxy filler, about 3/16" in each strut, where the dimple had been drilled out during fitting the previous strut inserts by the restorers.

They came out very easily.

Hasbeen

[FI Spyder]

So far no luck, although I haven't tried freezing it yet. I heated it with no adverse effects, but I am nervous to try it again after reading the above post.

My top nut came out with pipe wrench with out drilling out dimple (didn't know about it then) but they were like brand new (not your situation). Do you have any shock action left? Mine had zero, no gas, no oil, I could have tossed them in a bonfire and nothing would have happened. The idea is to heat the tube (making it expand) then freezing the nut with spray (making it contract). I would wire brush as much of the rust off the join as possible. Applying a hammer to it is to crack the rust weld. Persistance is key. I when you get it off be sure to apply some Loctite on the new nut when you put it on. It can back out in use.

[Roger27TBB]

Hello,

i would saw or mill off the top nut careful in one line without damage the thread of the strut with a saw or small drilling machine and then bend off the top nut a bit to unscrew it.

Hope you are successful.
Greetings from Roger27TBB

[sheetsofsound]

Well.

I have tried all that has been suggested except drilling out the dimple, as I can't be sure where it is. There have been at least a dozen heat/freeze cycles, (albeit cautiously, as there is some shock action still left), impact, 5 different penetrating oils left on for hours and/or days, different tools applied, I even took it to a local garage. I'd try lighting a candle and communing with aliens if I thought it would help.

Then violence. Not being conversant with the finer points of torture, I may have been a bit heavy-handed with my subject at first. The subject would not give up the goods. Indeed, the physical integrity of the subject began to fail, and still no progress. I am beginning to lose hope.

[sheetsofsound]

Well, success of a sort. FI Spyder was right. Perseverance was key. After the nut failed, I mangled it as tight as I could get it in my vise and then used a 5ft piece of pipe over a pipe wrench to give me more torque. Plus heat and freezing.

The carnage:


And the end result:


Victory of sorts, as I'm none too happy with the state of the threads. The other tube was not quite as bad, and I was able to locate the dimple before starting work.


Any opinions or suggestions? Are these still useable? I am new to this part of the car.

[FI Spyder]

I wouldn't. I would get a set from a car that is being parted/wrecked. Even though the car may be rotted out the struts will be good (your situation not withstanding).