>Folks,
>
>Front end rebuild has been going swimmingly on my 1980 TR7 until just now. I
>can NOT unscrew the large securing nut to take the damper/strut out of the
>strut tube. How tight is it on? Well, I've got a pipe wrench on the tube
>with about a two foot extension, and the nut locked in a bench vice, and all
>I'm doing is lifting the whole bench off the floor. I suspect this nut has
>never been off -- so 23 years of crud have had time to accumulate.
>
>Some thoughts.
>
>1. By any chance are those nuts reverse threaded?
>
>2. My British Leyland stuff on suspension talks about drilling out the
>"peening" at the top of the tube before removing the nut. I guess the
>"peening" is like a flywheel key, a bit of metal that prevents the nut from
>turning. Or maybe it is a dimple made my a punch? I can't see it, and I've
>steel wooled the tube looking for it. Maybe the later years didn't have it.
Peen means to shape with the peen of a hammer -- the side opposite
the flat side, as in a ball-peen. So the threads would be deformed
with a hammer or punch. If the nut is an elastic stop nut (like a
nylok, or all steel nut with an ovaled top (lots of them on british
cars), there might well not be any such peening.
>
>
>3. I've soaked the tube and nut in PB Blaster with no result. Also tried
>heating the tube with my propane torch. I didn't want it to get too hot, and
>I didn't know if the stuff inside the old shock absorber might expand/blow
>up, so I just made the tube too hot to touch, not glowing red or anything
>like that, but the nut still won't budge.
Heating things loosens them by causing differential expansion in
dissimilar materials -- usually steel and iron oxide. For it be
useful, you need to heat enough for some significant expansion to
occur. For steel, that's getting close to red hot.
>4. The new struts come with new nuts, so I can destroy the old one, but I
>don't want to mess up the threads in the tube.
>
>So, any fabulous ideas? As always, thanks in advance.
>
I suggest an impact wrench. Very useful on really stuck nuts, and on
things that are hard to keep from turning while you attempt to apply
torque to them. If you don't have one, take them somewhere that
does. Easy enough to do now that you've got them on the bench, and
much faster than futzing about.
David Scheidt
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