If you arent familiar with the friend I am talking about refer to this thread here…
http://www.nyspeed.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24427&highlight=fix+cooling+problem
So a few weeks ago. My friend tells me that he is going to attempt to replace the rear shock mount on his BMW cause its clunking… I think to myself ok… Shouldent be that hard…
He calls me up… “Umm Rob I think Im gonna need some help… I cant get the bolt that holds the shock on off and I snapped a bolt off the shock mount…” DOH!!!
I drive to his house the next morning only to find that with instructions off a bimmer forum in hand…
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He didnt realize that he needed to remove the wheel and the shock to replace the shock mount…
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He had ovalized the shock shaft and stripped the square taper that is supposed to prevent the shock shaft from spinning by using vice grips.
Quote of the day… “Well the open end (crecent) end of the wrench fit on there but the round end (splined) didnt so i figured it was stripped anyway…”
For those that didnt catch on… The round end didnt fit cause its a SQUARE taper… and tried fitting the round SPLINED end of the wrench on the SQUARE shock rod taper.
- He had snapped the mounting bolt for the old shock mount… (No biggie its being replaced)
So what I did for the next few hours…
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Tried to Square off the top of the shock rod with dremel so that a wrench could grip it again so that I could remove the nut from the mangled threads… didnt work… too mangled. Modification left too little material and would deform if we put a wrench on it.
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Section off the bolt that was jammed into the ovalized/ mangled section of the thread… ended up working… minimal damage to shock rod.
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Bought a metric nut from the home depot…
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Remove Shock Assembly from car.
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De ovalize grind off section of threads mangled so that new nut would fit.
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Install the new shock mount… Carefully thread the nut past the damaged section and onto parts of the shaft which still had good threads.
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Re-install shock assembly…
At least I got free food out of it…