Broken Shock Bolt

I replaced my stock shocks with Rancho RSX on my 2001 Cherokee.. But, I broke the head off of one of the bolts in the rear on the unibody.. We ended up welding a stud up there and used a bunch of washers to fill the void, but I was wondering what solutions others have used... And what is the long term durability of the welded stud.. Thanks..

Wade

2001 Cherokee Classic
1991 Cherokee Laredo

This has been discussed many times here. I recommend doing a search.

From what I've seen the two leading techniques are (a) drill the broken bolt out, tap and replace and (b) take an air hammer to the broken bolt and replace the nuts up inside the body. I did the former.

The most common mistake seems to be to try to use and easy-out to remove the broken bolts. The easy out breaks and makes drilling more difficult.

-Brian

wadea7 said:

I replaced my stock shocks with Rancho RSX on my 2001 Cherokee.. But, I broke the head off of one of the bolts in the rear on the unibody.. We ended up welding a stud up there and used a bunch of washers to fill the void, but I was wondering what solutions others have used... And what is the long term durability of the welded stud.. Thanks..

Wade

2001 Cherokee Classic
1991 Cherokee Laredo

Click to expand...

I did the same thing over the past weekend.

I ended up drilling it out, retapping and using a new nut.

A word to the wise . . . put anti-sieze on those badboys and you'll never have that problem again.

I ended up taking a whole saw and drilling a hole in the floorboard above the stud and drilling it out. Then I just put a bolt through it and made an access cover out of sheetmetal. Now if I can access the top of both of my upper shock mounts.