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Midship Brace Bolt Replacement

120m256

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Newark
#1
The midship brace and the nuts/bolts that hold it onto my car are very rusty. I would like to remove the brace and powdercoat it or replace it with the pierce brace http://www.piercemotorsport.com/2014-2018-fiesta-midship-brace/

Unfortunately, I have a bad feeling the nuts are really rusted onto the bolts, and at least some will snap off when trying to replace them. I have been spraying with PB, but I don't think that will help enough. Does anyone know how to replace these bolts if they break? Are they accessible from inside the car under the carpet? Thanks for any pics or info.

 


green_henry

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Pleasant Hill, CA
#3
Sometimes penetrants (PB/WD40/whatever) need a little help. Try a few light taps with a hammer on the sides of the nut and then applying some more penetrant, wait 30 minutes, and then try removing the nut.
 


M-Sport fan

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Princeton, N.J.
#4
IF the above fails, you could try one of the heating element tools ( http://www.theinductor.com/) which top tier garages/muffler shops use, but these are STUPID $$$$ to buy on your own, so you probably should go to one of these shops to have this done.

As far as I could tell, those are outside spot welded to the unibody type studs, and cannot be accessed/replaced from inside the car, which is WHY you should try to get the nuts broken free without snapping them off in the first place. (I would SOAK them in Kroil for a couple of days first, before ANY removal attempts.)

I went to my local True Value and got some 18/8 stainless lock nuts for those studs, (and then coated them in anti-seize as well) when I installed the Pierce mid brace on mine, as I did this mod BEFORE the demon rust had a chance to get a hold of those threads. ;)
(I also put plastic snap caps over the open bolt access holes in the Pierce brace as well to try and keep out as much of our winter 'salt soup' here as possible.)
 


KnockOff

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Menifee
#5
I have always had great success with liquid wrench. Had a nut years ago on my focus that convinced me. All rusted up on the bracket that held the cat/manifold on. One snapped the bolt. 3 inches over soaked with liquid wrench for bout 30 min. Second nut cam right off with minimal effort. Helped with my dp install on the fist. Nothing broke. Then recently on a 02 expedition's o2 sensors with 167k on the clock. Both came of perfect after a spray then 1hr another spray.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk
 




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