Offroad-Express

[quote="doddzee"]Been there, its a right pain in the arse!

I ended cutting the nut holding bracket off with a cold chisel and welding the nut to the floor on my dads truck, on mine i got out the gas axe and cut the floor out.

If you remove that nut bracket you may beable to smack an old socket on it to hold it

done the same thing got jigsaw cut the floor and chiseld it out,that reminds me i still got to weld the flap i cut
vince

That happened on mine to

To start with, we wedged a big screw driver between the nut and one side of the broken lock tab. That worked for one side.

The other side, we flicked the lock tab off and made enough room so we could get a pair of vice grips onto the nut and that worked well enough to start with.

In the end, we cut a slit in the floor so i could get my angle grinder in there with a cut off disc on it, cut a notch in the side of the nut, smashed the Shit out of the nut with a cold chisle untill it spread slighty, held it with the nut with the vice grips and it came off.

Don't be to shy about cutting the floor and making mess in there, you can tidy it up and screw a plate over it when your done

Mark it isn't that difficult to sort you just have to make enough room to get a socket on rip out old bolt from underneath which gives you enough room to get cold chisel in to the rest of the captive nut holder off ,mine were frozen too , bout half hour per bolt to sort. I put the new bolts at rear fed from top with a washer on them.

Yep, got it sorted. Ended up having to cut a square about 50mm x 50mm over the top of the nuts in the back so that I could cut off the holder and get a spanner on the nut. I just hacked the floor up with the jigsaw and folded it back. The bloody things have lock tight (the blue stuff) on them, that's why they don't come off.

It turned into a bit of a mission because of those two rear bolts. What should have taken about 1.5 - 2 hrs took about 4.5 in the end. Even getting a spanner onto the nuts while turning the bolt from below was a mission and took a bit of mucking around to keep the spanner on the nuts. They really take a lot of cranking with that lock tight Sockets didn't seem to work for us, but then I wasn't prepared to thrash the shit out of my good sockets

Anyway, it was worth it and at the cost of a few bolts it is a cheap mod! 50mm really makes a big difference in appearance. More than you'd think...

i cut an X over the top of the hole bended the flaps back and drilled both spot welds with a 4mm drile bit the half way with a 10mm knocked the captive nut with one hit thenheld onto it with vice grips

on another one i did i heated the nut up with a gas torch and the bolt wound out easy as

Good to hear Mark did you remember to cut a bigger slot for the 4wd lever ?

Don`t those rear bolts have Locktite on them?Maybe that`s why they came off easy when you heated them.Hope you put Locktite on the new ones.

T wrote:Good to hear Mark did you remember to cut a bigger slot for the 4wd lever ?

Hehehe... no!

I went to put it in 4wd the other day and it wouldn't go. Now I'm trying to decide how to fix the problem because if I cut the hole bigger I'm just going to end up loosing the water tightness of the rubber seal. What I would like to do is heat the lever and bend it forward a touch so that I don't have to hack at the tunnel or steel plate that bolts down to hold the rubber boot/seal.

The only problem is that I would need to do this in place otherwise I'll have a hell of a job getting the lever off.

Any suggestions? Is it likely that I will be able to heat and bend it in place? (I will be needing help from someone with that as I don't have the equipment)

3rnzir wrote:Don`t those rear bolts have Locktite on them?Maybe that`s why they came off easy when you heated them.Hope you put Locktite on the new ones.

Yes they do have Locktite on them. Why the hell they couldn't just put the bolts in from the top down like the rest of them I have no idea. It makes no sense to me to do it the other way and then put Locktite on them just in case the nuts come off.

Anyway, I replaced them with bolts from the top down and nylock nuts underneath.

Mark wrote:

T wrote:Good to hear Mark did you remember to cut a bigger slot for the 4wd lever ?

Hehehe... no!

I went to put it in 4wd the other day and it wouldn't go. Now I'm trying to decide how to fix the problem because if I cut the hole bigger I'm just going to end up loosing the water tightness of the rubber seal. What I would like to do is heat the lever and bend it forward a touch so that I don't have to hack at the tunnel or steel plate that bolts down to hold the rubber boot/seal.

The only problem is that I would need to do this in place otherwise I'll have a hell of a job getting the lever off.

Any suggestions? Is it likely that I will be able to heat and bend it in place? (I will be needing help from someone with that as I don't have the equipment)

The lever is easy to pull on and off mark, ive heated and bent mine and have the gear to do it if you want a hand doing yours.

Thanks Doddzee. I might have to take you up on that offer before QBW as I don't have the skills or gear for that. I'll send you a PM to try and arrange a time that suits you. Cheers.

whats the mod i here people talking about for the SWB autos i know it drops them or something so they dont dry out but dont know the exact deatles on it