Ok heres the scoop, I just bought some Westin nerf bars. They are supposed to mount up to the stockbody mounts. I tried getting one of the bolts out and it snapped. The other bolts won't come out either. They are rusted pretty good I suppose. Anyways, the question is, what can I do about the snapped bolt as far as removing it? And how do I get the other bolts out without snapping them too. Any and all help is appreciated.

 

When I took mine out, I used a heavy-duty breaker bar with a piece of pipe on the end to make a lever arm.

Here's the important part though. When backing the old bolt out, keep a slow, constant pressure on the head of the bolt. If you keep jerking the socket or using the 'hammer on wrench' techniqe, you'll shock load the steel and shear the bolt.

Even carbon steel (Grade 5 and Grade 8 Automotive) has a limit to its shear strength which in design is somewhere around 70-80k psi. Granted this is a high number, but when you shock load a lever arm of 24-36 inches with 100 or so pounds, the instant shear load sky-rockets.

This may sound like I'm feeding a line of **** but I'm almost done my Structural Engineering degree and run into this a lot.

As for the old bolt, GEEZ, I guess you will have to drill it out and re-thread the hole.

Hope this helps, have fun!

 

Thanks for the info. I did end up drilling out the old sheared bolt. As for the other ones... The hammer on wrench technique actually worked with no problems. I'm just glad its done.