Bolts, or “He Can Fix Anything but a Rainy Day”

By Tom McGowan

Coming across a speech a relative gave many years ago on the importance of apprenticeship caused me to reflect on the importance of learning from others. Aptitude is an important factor, but time watching those having more skills, talking with them, and working alongside them is the critical element. 

I ran a quick experiment on the subject. I asked a mature, well-educated, “A” student with two liberal arts degrees the question: “What would you do to loosen a stuck bolt?” After some thought, the reply was:

• Hit it with something heavy.
• Spray it with WD40. 

Both good answers. Not bad. Anything else? No. Two shots at fixing the problem.

I asked a mature, well-educated person that is mechanically inclined (me), “What would you do to loosen a stuck bolt?”

With little delay, I tallied up methods through number 21 below, with others added later by like-minded folks:

• Hit it axially (sideways) with a big drift and hammer.
• Spray it with penetrating oil like Liquid Wrench or PB Blaster.
• Get a bigger wrench.
• Use a cheater bar, or add length to a box wrench or open-end wrench by hooking it with another open-end wrench. 
• Use a box wrench rather than an open-end wrench.
• Use a six-point socket/impact socket rather than a twelve-point socket. 
• If it rounds off, use a Vice Grip, Channel Lock wrench or pipe wrench. 
• Use an impact wrench. If that does not work, lube the impact wrench, raise the air pressure to it, and try again. 
• If possible, eliminate extensions between the impact wrench and the bolt head that reduce impact torque at the bolt. 
• Tighten it and then try to loosen it. (An excellent move if it happens to be a left-hand thread!)
• Get someone to pull on the wrench while you push on it.
• Put a jack under the end of the wrench, lifting the wrench handle horizontally.
• Have lunch or take a break and think about it some, or let it go until the next day. 
• Look on the Internet or in books (like Tools and Their Uses, a NAVPERs (Navy Personnel) manual) for ideas.
• Heat the head of the bolt with a propane torch, stick welder, TIG welder, or oxy/acetylene torch.
• Heat the area around the bolt, and put ice on the bolt head, or use dry ice or nitrogen. 
• Hit the bolt near a crown, radially, with a sharp chisel, then slowly repeat, hitting it while changing the angle to approximate tangential blows.
• If it is a socket head bolt, use a Vice Grip wrench on the outside and hex or TORX wrench on the inside of the bolt head at same time.
• Hit the wrench near the end with a ball-peen hammer in a tangential direction.
• If the other end of the bolt has a nut on it, work on that end instead. (This works particularly well on bolts that are welded to a frame to begin with! Same goes for welded in place nuts!)
• Grind or snap the head of the bolt off, or drill it out, and extract the stud later to get the parts apart.
• Put the bolt head in a vice and rotate the attached item rather than the bolt.
• Think about whether the bolt has to be taken out, or can be worked around (e.g., leave the carburetor base on the intake manifold, and take top of the carburetor off to work on the float and inlet valve). 
• While pulling on the bolt with an open-end wrench or a box wrench, hit the head of the bolt with the ball end of a ball-peen hammer. 
• Weld a big nut on top of the bolt head and try again.
• If you are using a six-point socket that is a bit too loose, shim it with some sheet metal on three of the flats or line it with aluminum-foil duct tape.
• For snapped or stripped car-wheel lug nut studs, place an open-end wrench, claw-foot socket, or other bushing behind it to allow 1/8″ or more of free travel for the head of the stud. Place a large forged C-clamp C-end on the bushing and screw a head on the broken end of the stud, tighten the screw, hit the end of the screw handle end three times with a three-pound hand sledge or two-pound ball-peen hammer. The stud should now be free to hammer out with the clamp removed. 
• For bolts that protrude behind a flange or plate, use a vice grip or Channellock pliers to thread it through the back.
• For bolts, screws, or studs that protrude a half inch from the surface and are less than ½” diameter, put a drill chuck over them, tighten the chuck, and put the drill in reverse to back them out.
• For bolts that protrude behind a flange or plate, drill out to a smaller size, tap them, then thread in a hardened, long-shaft bolt. Tighten the new bolt and thread the broken bolt through the back. Then use two wrenches to extract the new bolt from the broken bolt. 
• Use a Dremel motor tool or similar with two stone-cutting discs and cut a slot into the top of a broken bolt. Take the biggest screwdriver that can fit the slot, tap it in, put a wrench on the screwdriver shaft for extra torque, and back the bolt out. 
• Cut it out with an oxy/acetylene cutting torch. 
• Get someone bigger and stronger to loosen it.
• Get someone more skilled to do the job.  

Collecting all of these took me more than a few years of being up against stuck bolts, and more than a few hours spent with more senior folks that had to solve the same problem. In turn, I learned what works and what doesn’t from others more skilled in the trade. And that is what apprenticeship is all about.