BAWC Forums

I am replacing my shocks and broke all 4 of my rear shock mounting bolts. I bought some BPE's to help eliminate this happening again, but now I have to get the mounting points off.

For those of you that don't know, on a Jeep XJ, the upper rear shock mounts are known for breaking. After I snapped the bolts I tried to punch them out, but the nuts on the other side of the unibody are welded on too tight, so I ripped up the carpet and cut wholes in the floor board to get to the nuts.

So far I broke 4 drill bits trying to drill out the old nuts. I can't get an angle grinder in there (hard angle) so I am down to two choices that I can think of. Buy a dremel and a shit load of cutting heads or some really good ones and try and cut them off, or buy a big fucking hammer and chisel and try and break the welds that way.

What do you think would work better? Dremel or big fucking hammer?

I am following this, but I can't seem to punch them out and I don't want to the spend the money on an air chisel thing. http://www.rocklizardfabrications.com/b ... mounts.htm

We were in the same exact boat with my friends XJ. Nothing worked for us either. We ended up taking it to a 4x4 shop. They drilled out from above and put a helicoil in each hole to attach the new shocks.

It just really sucks because I was able to drill out one, but the other 3 aren't going for shit. I am going to buy either a chisel and hammer or dremel, but the more I think about it, the more a dremel seems like it might not work. If I get a chisel, hammer, and use my angle grinder on the bolts a bit I might be able to pop them off. I don't know though.

Dude. Brute force. You can't really hurt anything in that area.

That is what I was thinking. I already cut open the floor and everything, and bought some sheet metal and to put over the holes when I am done.


What is really sad is that 3 of the 4 old shocks no longer extend by themselves, you literaly have to pull on them to extend them, they are the factory ones. So far the front is already sitting about 1 1/2 inches higher with the new shocks and BPE's, until I break them in. I installed the front ones in under 30 minutes for both.

I ended up buying the Black and Decker rotary tool instead of a dremel or chisel/hammer. Wal-Mart had on in the clearance section for $15 so I bought that and a 20 pack of heavy duty cutting disks for $5. Took me 5 minutes to get the nuts off and another 10 to put the new nuts/bolts on with the help of my wife.