Removing Leaf Spring Bolt?

Looking for opinions more than anything. I'm going to bed and it would be nice to wake up with ideas on how the hell to get this bolt out.

The entire crush sleeve or sleeve inside the leaf spring eye hole is coming out with the bolt. Any ideas on how to stop that from happening?

Oh, and in order to remove the rear (farthest away from the jeep) leaf spring bolts do i need to remove my factory tow hitch? I'm 99.99% positive i do. Any ideas on how to knock that bolt out as well? She's stuck in.

Pictures are related.

The last time I took those bolts out, the hardest part was getting the bolt to turn at all without tearing the nut out of the frame. You got the hard part whipped.

He wasn't interested in saving his springs. I fired up the one hand angle grinder, with a good supply of blades handy and proceeded to dismantle the whole thing one chunk at a time. I'm pretty good with a one hand angle grinder, though I did nick the spring mounts in a couple of places. I had one side apart in way less than an hour. You just have to be careful and know when to stop.

You can use the thin side of the blade as grinder, you don't have cut. I also had a one hand air grinder handy for the really tight spots, but really didn't need it any.

The next best technique is heat, spray with oil to quench, wiggle with a pair of vice grips or channel lock pliers., Heat quench and repeat until you get that bushing to move. You are going to smoke the rubber bushings, the smell and soot are the worst part. You really don't have to get it red hot, I've had reasonable success with an electric heat gun. The technique is heat then quench with spray oil, you want to get movement (expansion and contraction) to break the rust bond between the bushing and the bolt and at the same time hope some of the oil gets sucked into the gap between the inner bushing and the bolt.

Another trick to make cutting the rubber bushing out with an angle grinder easier, is to keep it soaked in water. Cold rubber cuts a lot easier than melting rubber. I use an empty window cleaner spray bottle full of water to keep things soaked while cutting rubber, plastic, undercoated sheet metal or anything that melts with heat.

If the spring is not to be re-used, cut it off. When you get down to just the bolt, you can apply heat or penetrating oil directly to the threaded area. A small air cut-off tool works best, but a 4 inch angle grinder with a cutting blade will also work. The rear bolts can be cut as needed and replaced.

Use a Sawsall on each side of the spring to cut the bolt and remove the spring.

At the point you are at, the Jeep should be supported completely by stands.
Place the stands under the frame on each side Jeep up by the front - leaf spring mount. Then rest it on them.

Have you tried putting a vice grips on the sleeve? It looks like there is room. The hard part is usually getting the bolt out of the weld nut in the frame, which it looks like you have achieved.

Update. Got it out and finished the jeep. 3.5" RE lift.

31" BFG ATs on order. Have crager soft 8s sitting in the garage ready to be mounted.

Tightened the nut back in, put a C-clamp on that sleeve (the metal one was coming out - not the rubber one) and then unbolted it. Came right out. Hardest part was removing the hitch to get room to pull the rear hanger bolts out. Ended up cutting them off and replacing them with grade 8 bolts. (have the factory bolts on order, but i need to drive the jeep to work tomorrow.)

I just had this problem putting on my itty bitty RE 2" lift. I didn't want to f@ck with taking the factory hitch off so I got creative (I thought).

I took the whole shackle off. The lower bolt was fused to the crush sleeve, but the upper shackle bolt came right out. Once I had the leaf out, I had a lot more room to cut the fused bolt with an angle grinder.

Then I just put the shackle right back on, replaced that lower bolt, and, viola! Back in business, without having do deal with the factory trailer hitch!

Yeah. I was patting myself on the back a little more than would probably be propper on that little move. Probably obvious to the pro's on here, but for me . . . well, I was just stoked that it worked.

Wait... you mean you can swap the leafs without having to take the shackle off, but the trade-off is you need to remove the factory trailer hitch?

Yea, just take the shackle off. With a judicious application of propane torch and seafoam pulling the shackle is downright easy.

I couldn't figure out why the OP needed to pull the trailer hitch, now that makes sense... like going to the grocery store the long way around the planet.

To be fair, I was really surprised at how bad the design was right there. They way they set up the original bolts, you would have juuuuuuuuuust enough room to get the lower bolt out between the shackle and the gas tank, IF everything went right (the nut side is away from the gas tank, so you have to pull the bolt out that way). But, when they bolt the trailer hitch to the frame rail . . . that whole set-up goes out the window. And, since the trailer hitch is sitting there, staring you in the face as the reason you can't pull the bolt out, your brain just goes into, 'okay, so, the trailer hitch has gotta go" mode.

If they would have put the nut on the other side, the problem would be avoided altogether.

Teephphah said:

To be fair, I was really surprised at how bad the design was right there. They way they set up the original bolts, you would have juuuuuuuuuust enough room to get the lower bolt out between the shackle and the gas tank, IF everything went right (the nut side is away from the gas tank, so you have to pull the bolt out that way). But, when they bolt the trailer hitch to the frame rail . . . that whole set-up goes out the window. And, since the trailer hitch is sitting there, staring you in the face as the reason you can't pull the bolt out, your brain just goes into, 'okay, so, the trailer hitch has gotta go" mode.

If they would have put the nut on the other side, the problem would be avoided altogether.

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it's designed that way so the bolt will be less likely to fall out while you're driving if the nut were to happen to come loose and fall off.

WB9YZU said:

Use a Sawsall on each side of the spring to cut the bolt and remove the spring..

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the problem there is that you end up leaving the threaded part of the bolt threaded into the frame. not a fun job trying to get that out.

sidriptide said:

the problem there is that you end up leaving the threaded part of the bolt threaded into the frame. not a fun job trying to get that out.

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true, but a lot easier than trying to replace the entire spring pocket because you cut that out instead of the bolt

GrimmJeeper said:

it's designed that way so the bolt will be less likely to fall out while you're driving if the nut were to happen to come loose and fall off.

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Well . . . sure . . . when you put it like that, I guess it kinda, sort of makes a whole lot of sense . . .

I am going to be swapping my old suspension (91) onto my new old cherokee (98) so this discussion has been helpfull in preparing me for the realities ahead X2... good feedback from all!

I had to chop the bolt off on the inside of the outside perch. Then I hacked out the spring eye out with an angle grinder which left the remainder of the bolt. Leave enough bolt to grab with a pipe wrench and unbolt it. I used pb blaster to make it easier. Once it was out, I installed my new springs with a new bolt from the dealership for $10. It screwed right in with no issues.

I just dis my lift on my xj, and I had to chop the rear bolts and had to destroy the feont leaf spring bushing to get the metal sleeve out...good luck..