Oh. Thanks for the reply Dave. What does that involve then?
My Dad said just drill it out but I want to make sure nothing is going to get messed up.

Just drill into the hole? And how will that enable me to fit a new bolt? Is it easy?
Will the bolt just follow the thread the drill made or will the drill bit force out the old bolt?

get your dad to...drill it out so there is a hole all the way through, then fit a nut an bolt where just a bolt used to be

for the head to come off i would think its rusted solid so may not budge.

i can see the next post tomorrow

ive drilled through my suspension arm ruined the cv boot, drill broke and ive lost an eye
do i have a claim?

i warned these bolts are chocolate
quess a lot of my posts dont appear on all members screens
i must be blacklisted

s and b said:

i can see the next post tomorrow

ive drilled through my suspension arm ruined the cv boot, drill broke and ive lost an eye
do i have a claim?

Click to expand...

edited my post

i am waiting for the left handed drill and drill bit to arrive

i'd stick a lump of wood between the CV and the hole im drilliling
So when it does go through - you hit wood (waits for terrible jokes)

And you save alot of hassel

Ziggy

s and b said:

i can see the next post tomorrow

ive drilled through my suspension arm ruined the cv boot, drill broke and ive lost an eye
do i have a claim?

i warned these bolts are chocolate
quess a lot of my posts dont appear on all members screens
i must be blacklisted

Click to expand...

Sorry. I had already undone 3 of the four points before I saw your post about the bolts and I ended up having to undo all 4 in the end to be able to get it back. And then, when the final bolt snapped you were the first person I thought of.

just to add had one in this morning really had to fight it to get the bottom arm out
rear roll bar disconnected and spring clamps on strut
no way would i have attempted the small roll bar bolts as you could tell they would snap (o4 plater low miles)

so to reiterate some are easy some a pain

s and b said:

just to add had one in this morning really had to fight it to get the bottom arm out
rear roll bar disconnected and spring clamps on strut
no way would i have attempted the small roll bar bolts as you could tell they would snap (o4 plater low miles)

so to reiterate some are easy some a pain

Click to expand...

Aint that how life is tho?
I had my heatshield off - on my old car they all snapped off

This car with a decent fitting socket - no pretreatment, they've all come out bar 1
Only needed heat the sodding things right up - wack a socket onto it and off it came

so yes i agree - some bolts doodle pip - sometime they aint doodle pip

Cooper Grease is your friend when refitting

Ziggy

fern1515 said:

.

And BEWARE. I was screwing in the final one of eight bolts on the anti roll bar and it snapped. I am now left with 7 and a half bolts on the roll bar. The one that snapped is the front most on the drivers side attached to the wishbone.

How big of a job do I have on my hands to sort that out now?

Cheers!

Click to expand...

Be super careful when you are drilling the snapped bolt out. It's really easy for the bit to wander, and drill the thread out on the wishbone instead. Then you will have no choice but to use a nut and bolt.
An possible alternative is a screw extractor. I tried this when this happened to me, but with no luck (and you definitely don't want to snap one of those, they are very hard steel, impossible to drill).

Copper grease on replacement is your friend. As are high tensile bolts...get them cheap on ebay.

When I replaced wishbone, I removed the ARB (at relevant side only) then the wishbone. I then shuffled the new wishbone into place in this order: back bolt at suspension subassembly, front nut/bolt, then balljoint pin. I can tell you with the ARB off, I had no problems getting the pin in, the wishbone moves up and down with relatively little effort and the hub has enough play to move fairly easily by hand.
The ARB takes a bit of sweating to get back into place though, this is the much more difficult part of the job.

As S and B pointed out, there is a lot of merit in leaving this in place, and using 2 men to fight the increased resistance it adds. I would be tempted to do it this way in the future...

Since these are swines again to remove

Im assuming heating the offending area up will help loads?

Ziggy

Ziggy122 said:

Since these are swines again to remove

Im assuming heating the offending area up will help loads?

Ziggy

Click to expand...

from the mot manual

inappropriate modification or repairs,
especially by welding, or evidence that
excessive heat has been applied, to
steering components or structural members

Click to expand...

heating an arm could cause weakness, especially if using proper heating equipment like oxy/acetylene, i would advise extreme caution to the point i would only light up my torch as a last resort on something like this