Inliners International Forums General Discussion Drive Train Nova shock tower removal

OK, here's one for you guys to chew on. I little while ago I bought a CPP Mini Subframe kit for my '64 Nova, and started to do the work to install it about a month ago. The first step in the process is to remove the shock towers and pull the shocks off the car. Pretty simple, right? Just 4 1/4-20 nuts holding each tower on, should take about a minute to zip them off, right? Wrong. Seems that what GM did was to use a special type of carriage bolt that the nuts screw on to that hold the shock tower in place. When I tried to unscrew the nuts, some of them came loose without any problem. The rest, unfortunately, did not. When I put a wrench on them, the entire nut and bolt assembly rotated instead of the nut coming off. So I put a drop or two of Liquid Wrench on each nut and let it soak in for a day, then repeated it every day for a week. No soap, the nuts still wouldn't loosen up any. So I tried using a drop of Marvel Mystery Oil and did that for a week. Still no joy. There is some kind of a lock plate under the shock tower that holds the carriage bolt from turning when the nuts are either tightened or loosened, and these plates have either warped or the slot has opened up enough to let the bolt turn. There is a little rust present, but the nuts and bolts are nowhere near frozen or rusted solid. I've also tried jamming a small screwdriver under the bolt head to try to hold it in place while I unscrewed the nut, but that didn't work either. The bolt still rotated merrily when I tried to unscrew the nut. My next thought is to use a Dremel and cut a slot on one of the flats of the nut, then take a cold chisel and split the nut. I can't just cut the bolts off, because they're a specialty bolt, and god only knows where I could find a new set of them, and I need them to hold the shock towers in place when all this gets reassembled. As of right now, the driver's side tower has one nut I can't get loose, and the passenger side has 3 like that. Anybody have any ideas or have had a similar problem? I could use some advice here.

Just drill the bolt/hardware out.

I am pretty sure you can use/get different hardware to put it back together.

I would not want to use it anyways if its that corroded/rusted.


MBHD

Had a similar problem, just used a torch and cut them off ,ordered new bolts and chrome shock towers from Luttys and spot welded the bolts in place with a wire feed when I reinstalled them. This is a common problem with the early Novas. Did you get the CPP kit with the upper A-arms or just the lowers? From what information I've been able to gather it would be a good move to replace the ball joints in the kit with some good quality units, ie: Moog, Napa etc.

I've always jammed a screwdriver or cold chisel under them to stop the bolt from spinning. If you need to cut a few off, please email me at chevy2inreno@sbcglobal.net and I'll find some extras I can send you.

Dave

I have the CPP mini subframe kit too (not installed yet). I am thinking about doing this based on a thread over on StevesNovaSite.com

Wow, it's been longer than I thought since I started on this. I thought it was about October when I got stuck on the shock tower nuts, but I posted this at the end of July. Amazing how time gets away from you.

Anyway, I have a progress report and update. One of my car buddies and his wife came over for dinner on Saturday. Since I didn't want to destroy either of the shock towers in the process of getting them off the car, I had been using various chemicals to loosen the nuts, including GM Heat Riser penetrant/lube (GM part# 88862627) and oil of wintergreen (which I bought at a GNC health food/vitamin store). I had been using a few drops of the GM penetrant,applying it every other day for about a week, and it was obviously starting to work, because I was getting some residue seeping out of the threads, so something was going on chemically. If that didn't work, the oil of wintergreen was the next step.

While my buddy was here, I showed him what I'd been doing on the Nova, and he said he had a trick for getting the nuts off the bolts. So after dinner, we went out to the shop. I fired up the compressor and got my air impact out of the tool box, along with my BIG screwdriver (we're talking about a screwdriver about 3 feet long with a shank about an inch thick). When I bought it, the tool guy called it a screwdriver, and it does kind of look like a screwdriver, just one that's taken WAY too many steroids. I've always used it as a pry bar, which is what we did with it this time too. Tom stuck the screwdriver through the shock tower and pulled on it, putting sideways pressure on the bolts while I zapped the nuts with the air impact with a 1/2" deep socket on it. It took a few bursts from the impact, but two of the remaining three nuts came off. They were still a little reluctant to let go, but they did come off. The last one unscrewed part way and then refused to budge any further, but by then we could slide the bolt out of the retaining slot with it still attached to the shock tower, which we did. Then we put a vise grip on the base of the bolt and used a box end wrench to unscrew the nut, and it came off.

After we got the nuts off the bolts, I took a look at them. I was still kind of curious about why they had been SO hard to unscrew when neither the bolts or nuts seemed to be rusted. Looking at them closely, I saw that the bolt threads were not quite stripped, but had been deformed, probably from the last time the front shocks had been changed. I'm guessing that the nuts were put on the same way I took them off, namely, with an air impact gun, and it stretched the threads enough to make them REALLY hard to unscrew. So, both problem and mystery solved. This coming weekend, I'm going to pull the front springs and pull the upper and lower control arms and get the mini subframe kit installed. Stay tuned for more reports. I'm taking pictures as this goes along, so I'll probably be posting some here, and I'm planning on writing an article for The 12 Port News when this is all finished, which should be fairly soon now that I can get at the rest of the front suspension.

Great to hear! I'll definitely remember this when/if I take the shock towers off my subframe.

Thanks!

-Sam.

good to hear that you're back to working on this. After putting it off for a long time, we finally got my CPP stuff installed:
PICS HERE

Lyndon,

took a look at yours on the Stovebolt Website link. If i do this I thought I would want the kit in Silver. But THAT Black looks like pure EVEEL !

Oh and glad to hear our friend Zeke in Boise (pronounced Boyce-See) got his towers off. That is something I will watch out for. Yikes!

James

thanks. I really like the black. I also pulled the CPP stickers off.