I'm in the middle of swaping out my factory shocks. I got one shock/strut side off with a little persuation. I used (i) a small wire brush to clean up the rusted threads and (ii) liquid wrench, (iii) needle nose locking plyers to hold the steel shaft under the ruber mount.

I alternated between a compressed spring and non-compressed spring. It finally came off with the spring not compressed.

The other side is rusted more than the first, however, and it won't come off. I plan to take it to a auto supply parts store and ask them to help.

Is this a good idea or is there some other trick that I am missing?

 

I used a cup brush chucked up in a drill motor and lots of WD40 to clean the threads.

I would back the nut off a round, tighten it back, clean with WD40 and wire brush again, back off 2 rounds then retighten 1 round, clean and buff ... repaet till it comes off.

The rust builds up and the heat generated almost welds the nut into place.

 

If the shocks are done for, consider a nut splitter tool.

 

Yeh, I have two nut splitters - small and medium but these do not fit on the strut nut ...the rubber shock mount is in the way.

 

cut it off...thats what i did..

 

pound a deep socket on it and snap the nut

 

I had to cut both of those nuts off...they were a pain in the a$$.

 

PB Blaster & an impact wrench

 

After about an hour I gave up on that idea. Went to use a larger impact gun, but my buddy couldn't find the attachment to hook it up so we ended up grinding the damn nuts off. Now that I look back on the situation, if I could do it all over again I probably would have used the deep socket idea and just snapped the nuts of. Would have saved me like 2 hrs. Oh well...you live and learn.

 

I took it to my favorite parts store. They mangled the black plastic dust sheild and got a locking set of plyiers on the shaft.

I thought of that but did not want to cut the plastic sheild. Oh well, it is off now. My new shcoks have a coated rod and a allen head at the top for future removal.

 

Yeah, I had to be really careful when grinding the nuts off so as not to damage the rubber shock tower mounts. Just curious...what shocks did you get?

 

If you notice, the very top of every shock shaft (above the threads) is shaped like a circle with flats on both sides - kinda like an oval.

There is a special socket - appropriately named a 'shock removal socket' that has the female version of the top pattern of the shock shaft. You simply use that special socket with your ratchet or breaker bar to hold the shaft from spinning - and remove the nut. The pattern on the end of the shock shaft extends about a 1/2" past the first thread so the nut will come all the way off the threads witht the tool still in place.

Of course,it is also a good idea to use some type of penetrating fluid to loosen up the nut and lube the threads as mentioned above.

You can also use this tool to install your shocks...

-Jay-

 

Had to cut and then drill mine off

 

In my case, I had to use an air hammer to cut the bolt off the top of the strut, just to get a the bottom spring cup and top of the strut mount. Was a HUGE pain in the ***. good luck

 

Stock ride height - LT headers so I picked HD Beilstein shocks.

I knew there was a special wrench for the top of the shock which I did not have. In addition, I did put the flat spot in the vice and still could not budge the nut so I think the special wrench may not have worked either. This bugger was really rusted. When it finally came off the threads at the top were totally gone!

...more GM gunk!