legacycentral bbs

Today, I decide to change my tranny and engine mounts. Started with the tranny to realize that the crossmember was rusted like hell. The mount to tranny bolts were crumbling has I was trying to remove them.

Where I live, we've got pretty good winters and they put salt everywhere.

So, got to the four bolts that holds the mount to the transmission, heated them and they broke one after the other. I actually broke only three cause one was already broken.

I spent a hour trying to figure out what I could do to finally come to the conclusion that I had to drill the bolts and file new holes. Not enough time to do that so I bolted back the the crossmember. Surprisingly, it didn't change anything at all when driving it.

Any I was planning to change the body for an impreza, next summer.

Change the body...lol. As if that's just some mod everyone does.

Road salt.... the subject of my most dire hatred. With the economy the way it is, you'd think states would be willing to save a few tens of millions of dollars a year, and simultaneously eliminate the only insurmountable obstacle to keeping one car for most of your life. Dolts who have no business behind the wheel of a car in the first place would be weeded out in the process too, actually making the roads safer than the current "let's lay down an inch of salt today just incase it snows sometime this week" philosophy.


[/rant]

A good preventative measure is to coat the underside of your car with oil/grease. Obviously you want to keep it off the exhaust, and any rubber stuff. But it works wonders.

Certainly been there. We have our fair share of salt here too, and we need it with lake effect snow. There's other chemical means of eating snow up, but they're expensive and our city's broke. So - we make due.

In the future, spray in penetrating oil like PB Blaster for a day or two before trying to remove the bolts.

Instead of using something like Mapp gas or a propane torch, use oxyacetalene - it heats quicker (so the bolt has less of a chance of expanding), and with a brazing tip, better accuracy. Were you heating the bolts, or the surrounding metal?

Finally, hammer on your socket so it's flush, and to loosen the internal rust up.

TrueBlue wrote:Instead of using something like Mapp gas or a propane torch, use oxyacetalene - it heats quicker (so the bolt has less of a chance of expanding), and with a brazing tip, better accuracy. Were you heating the bolts, or the surrounding metal?

I used oxyacetalene torch and I was heating the bolts since the tranny case is aluminum.

Then the bolts were expanding. You essentially grew them.

TrueBlue wrote:Then the bolts were expanding. You essentially grew them.