Quote:
Originally Posted by Ricky Bobby
When I was doing my right front wheel bearing, I was all done after a serious week of working on it slowly, and was drawing in the axle with a homemade "puller tool", which was an impact socket with an axle nut welded on the end, and the edges ground down so the threads could go inward, thread on the axle stub and pull it in to the hub as I turned the socket.
Well, the welding job wasn't too great and I was hitting the gym hard that week, so I torqued the hell out of the socket just a bit too much, and low and behold, the nut snapped off the socket, completely flush with the inside of the hub and the axle stub. Took about 3 hours of grinding notches in the broken axle nut, and trying to force it counterclockwise using a chisel to get it free again.
That was definitely an OH SHIT moment
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Aye... When you heard the snap... I can only imagine the "WTF!" moment lol.
I remember refreshing the suspension on the 4.4. Came down to the balljoint on the steering knuckle. Used the tool to seperate the thrust arm from the knuckle no problem. Came to unbolting the ball joint from the hub. I think it was a E 45T bolt. Tried the CRC Freeze Off first because I got it from from Bimmerfest so decided to give it a try. Well that stuff sucks. Put some torque on it and the bolt snapped clean off. Great. Try a bunch of other things that didnt work. Finally just took the whole assembly off and brought i to the shop. Viced the knuckle on the bed of the Drill Press and started to center drill the bolt out. Got it all out and started to ream the rest of the sidewalls of the bolt out so I could use a tap to chase the threads. Get the tap and slowly go in and backing it back out. "BINK" tap broke inside the hole. AWESOME. Ended up using a cobalt drill bit to get it all out. Reshaped the tap and started again.
All I wanted to do was replace a ball joint and then I ended up with this mess. 5 hours of drilling and crap later got it all back. Go to put the new ball joint in the cup... found the boot was torn. MOTHER&$^#%$(!!!!. I just put everything down and went to bed after that. The stars aligned perfectly to the point it didn't want me to get this done. lol