Last week, I played mechanic and had to replace an oil pan gasket on our
99 Ford Taurus with 160k+ miles.
This required the removal of the exhaust pipes from the manifold
flanges. Anyone who's attempted this knows how rusty and brittle those
manifold stud bolts and nuts can get. I've heard nightmare stories about
them snapping, or cracking the manifold casting, etc.

Of course, on mine, the nuts were rusted half off and practically welded
to the studs. After spraying with penetrating oil and letting sit, these
things were just not moving, because they were rounded over and
undersized from the rust.

So I picked up a set of these Irwin Bolt Extractors:
http://www.irwin.com/irwin/consumer/jhtml/browse.jhtml?catId=IrwinCat100511

The 12mm stud bolts were long and actually too thick to fit through the
hole in the bolt extractor, so I thought I had wasted my money. Then I
decided to try something. The heads on these studs are actually rectangular.
http://info.rockauto.com/RB/kit03131-007.jpg

I took the smallest Irwin extractor, 5/16-8mm, and put it on that
rectangular head, used my breaker bar with a pipe on the end, pulled
hard on that bad boy from about 3 to 5 o'clock and then "POP!" and a
small cloud of rust-dust poofed out from above the manifold. Sucker was
loose! Did the same to the other stud bolt, which looked in worse shape
than the first.

I had another 12mm head starter motor bolt that was rounded off and the
proper sized Irwin extractor took it off like it was a wingnut.

Next, I had a couple 6mm machine screws (that hold the oil pan) with
sheared off heads.
You've all seen these on the TV infomercials...
http://www.aldn.com/grabit/

I was skeptical, but the Grabit worked perfectly and took them both out
without doing any damage to anything other than what it removed.

So two thumbs up for both of these products. WELL worth the money.


--

-MIKE-

"Playing is not something I do at night, it's my function in life"
--Elvin Jones (1927-2004)
--
http://mikedrums.com

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