Lousy day? At least you didn't do this:

Yeah, so I decided that after 150,000 miles the factory shocks on my '99 were well paid for and had to get gone.

And of course as expected I broke 1 of each bolt on the upper rear shock mounts.

Oh.. did I mention this is my daily driver and I start a new job tomorrow? Hmm.. Yeah, lovely.

So me thinks I shall be tack welding my shocks in for the time being.

Stupid shocks.

The same thing happened to me on my 90. The problem is I took it to a guy that works out of his house and he busted them and couldnt tap them out. I had to drive it home with no rear shocks and sagging leafs. Fun! Expect to go through about 1 titanium bit per busted bolt, and wear safety glasses. PLEASE. Oh I forgot to add mine is a DD too, it really sucks having something go wrong.
Collin

I guess I was lucky. My brother and I did mine this weekend and didn`t break anything on my 89. I did use Kano Kroil and PB blaster everyday for a week first.

shocks are overrated

Is there enough stud hanging out to weld a bolt/nut to? If not have fun drilling. I’d buy 4 drill bits to start with. The other option is to pull up the carpet and come in from the top. Use a small hole saw and weld a piece of sheet metal back over it when you get done.

It's just about ****ing impossible to get a tap wrench up there even after you've successfully drilled the holes. If you have welding equipment, I strongly suggest that you dedicate a tap to this purpose, and weld a foot-long extension to the end.

I Drilled first 3mm hole through the bolt remains then drilled again with 6mm and rethreaded it to 8mm or M8... Easy and fast, took about an hour. Only problem is to get the drilling straight and in the middle of the bolt...

At the risk of sounding like a broken record...here is my, and many others, fix for this. However, Im not sure if its the same on a newer xj... Worked on my 94. Maybe someone can say whether or not this will work.

"Why go through the top? If you cant get the tap out and fix the hole, just grab a good punch and a hammer and give the nut a couple good wacks from below. If you have an air chisel this works great. There are only like 3 tack welds holding that nut up in there. Once its out, get a nut with a shoulder on it. Put alittle thread locker on there. Tape the nut inside of a box wrench, and with alittle messing around you can stick it right up on top of the whole and bolt it up. There are spaces in the bracing between the shocks than you can get into. Once you get the hang of how to hold the wrench its a breeze. The shouldered nut that I used had ridges in it, like a lock washer type deal, and once I got it fairly snug I didnt even need the wrench to torque them down. Either way good luck. Broken taps suck...."

I still wouldnt mind cutting into the floor and re-welding some new hardware up there...but this really only took about 10 minutes while fiddling with BPEs as well. Good luck.

Justin

ghettocruiser said:

At the risk of sounding like a broken record...here is my, and many others, fix for this. However, Im not sure if its the same on a newer xj... Worked on my 94. Maybe someone can say whether or not this will work.

"Why go through the top? If you cant get the tap out and fix the hole, just grab a good punch and a hammer and give the nut a couple good wacks from below. If you have an air chisel this works great. There are only like 3 tack welds holding that nut up in there. Once its out, get a nut with a shoulder on it. Put alittle thread locker on there. Tape the nut inside of a box wrench, and with alittle messing around you can stick it right up on top of the whole and bolt it up. There are spaces in the bracing between the shocks than you can get into. Once you get the hang of how to hold the wrench its a breeze. The shouldered nut that I used had ridges in it, like a lock washer type deal, and once I got it fairly snug I didnt even need the wrench to torque them down. Either way good luck. Broken taps suck...."

I still wouldnt mind cutting into the floor and re-welding some new hardware up there...but this really only took about 10 minutes while fiddling with BPEs as well. Good luck.

Justin

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Worked much better than pulling carpet on my '00!

I'm with ghetto on this one, just hit those things with an air chisel until the welds break and they pop out. What I did next varies a little from ghetto's method. I went to Lowes and got 4 3/8"x1" bolts, 8 flat washers, and 4 locking nuts. I put a flat washer on each bolt, looped a piece of mechanic's wire around each bolt and fished them through the hole in the center of the crossmember across to and down through the shock bolt holes. Once they were down through the holes, I simply grabbed hold of them and gave the wire a good tug and it came unlooped from the bolt and out. I was fortunate enough to have a box-end wrench that was angled enough on one end that I could reach up through the cross member with and get on top of the bolts that I had fished up in there and hold them to tighten them up. I also used lots of anti-sieze on everything.

Just FYI: When you take the new shocks out of the box and cut the little plastic straps off. Let them come out to full length and then compress each shock 3 to 4 times and then allow to stand vertical at full length for 10 to 15 minutes before installation. This is to allow something to happen with the distribution of the oil inside the shock, I can't remember exactly what it is though.

Good luck,

Chad

ghettocruiser said:

At the risk of sounding like a broken record...here is my, and many others, fix for this. However, Im not sure if its the same on a newer xj... Worked on my 94. Maybe someone can say whether or not this will work.

"Why go through the top? If you cant get the tap out and fix the hole, just grab a good punch and a hammer and give the nut a couple good wacks from below. If you have an air chisel this works great. There are only like 3 tack welds holding that nut up in there. Once its out, get a nut with a shoulder on it. Put alittle thread locker on there. Tape the nut inside of a box wrench, and with alittle messing around you can stick it right up on top of the whole and bolt it up. There are spaces in the bracing between the shocks than you can get into. Once you get the hang of how to hold the wrench its a breeze. The shouldered nut that I used had ridges in it, like a lock washer type deal, and once I got it fairly snug I didnt even need the wrench to torque them down. Either way good luck. Broken taps suck...."

I still wouldnt mind cutting into the floor and re-welding some new hardware up there...but this really only took about 10 minutes while fiddling with BPEs as well. Good luck.

Justin

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That is what I had to deal with. Drove with one shock for about 7 months. I then finely found someone who could get it out. He used a nutcert in the hole to fix it though, and it pulled out a month or two later. So I just did the down from the top thing after losing a few bolts in the cross member trying to get one in from underneath.

I don't know what I am going to do to get the bolts out..

What I AM going to do to remedy the current issue is simply weld the shocks in for now. I'll deal with grinding them out later.

sweetjeep said:

I don't know what I am going to do to get the bolts out..

What I AM going to do to remedy the current issue is simply weld the shocks in for now. I'll deal with grinding them out later.

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If you are going weld them in anyways, why not just weld in bar pin eliminators? The BPE brackets have a lot more surface area to weld to and you would still have an eye bolt so you can actually remove the shock. I think I paid $25 for mine (Warrior Products, but they all look pretty much the same). Most 4 x 4 places have them in stock. If you can’t find them at your favorite store just use the rear sway bar mount (the one that goes over the leaf springs). BTW I removed my rear sway bar with out any ill effects.

sweetjeep said:

I don't know what I am going to do to get the bolts out..

What I AM going to do to remedy the current issue is simply weld the shocks in for now. I'll deal with grinding them out later.

Click to expand...

That's what I was going to do when I broke my bolts a few months ago on my '91. I decided to try knocking the nuts out and putting new ones in and all in it didn't take over an hour to do, I did have an air chisel but it's hardly necessary. It's tight getting the nuts in there but a long box end wrench helps (and a dab of silicone gasket maker to hold the nut in the wrench). I used the shouldered nuts off an exhaust clamp and they worked well. Noticed last night while swapping out the front hub on the '89 that one of the bilstiens on that is leaking so it looks like I get to do it all again this weekend.

Yeah it really doesnt take too much effort to pop them up through. A couple good wacks should do it. I had an air hammer so I blasted them out...alittle overkill yes...but they came out Shouldered bolts with the "locking ridges" worked great for me. Over 3000 miles and still tight. I didnt even think about fishing the bolts down through. I was installing JKS BPEs and I guess I was just in "follow the directions mode". I think on the one side...maybe the passenger side, I was able to actually get the nuts in by hand and get them started. I have long fingers tho so that probably helped...

Justin