Torque required to remove seized Cherokee front axle nuts?

You are going to like having that impact around. I finally broke down and got one earlier this year. I should have done that a long time ago.

Anak said:

You are going to like having that impact around. I finally broke down and got one earlier this year. I should have done that a long time ago.

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Agreed. I just bought an air hammer and now I'm wondering how I worked on cars for 20 years without one.

IslanderOffRoad said:

Agreed. I just bought an air hammer and now I'm wondering how I worked on cars for 20 years without one.

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Another life altering tool is the air nibbler. You won't use it often, but it makes cutting complex curves in sheet metal a cinch. I bought one of my own to cut out the rotten floor pans and cut new sheet metal. Just used it again cutting ductwork.

I've already had to use the impact for something else. I had 10 seized and rusted 10 mm allen bolts holding the hubs onto the rotors of a '79 Benz. There was two of those bolts in which the impact gun struggled a bit. Seems like the first few seconds the gun does less impacts per second, then if it doesn't come off, it ups the impacts per second. A few of those bolts took 10 seconds of impacting just to get them moving, which was far worse than the Jeep's axle nut. Money well spent. I'm returning the weaker impact gun today.

Remember to rotate your batteries on the charger. If you don't use the tool often, the battery life degrades. Those batteries are expensive to replace too.

I don't know if you already have some but two sets (metric and SAE) of six point impact sockets will save you some grief in two ways. With the impact sockets you will save exploding some regular sockets and with the six points you will save rounding off some nuts and bolt heads.
A good quality 1/2 to 3/4 inch adaptor may also come in handy. I have some large one off impact sockets for special jobs, 3/4 inch impact sockets in the larger sizes are a lot easier to find.
Reminds me I loaned out my 3/4 inch impact, time to get it back before it disappears.
Just a tip, I bought hand tools by the pallet at military auctions.

What do you mean by rotate your batteries on the charger? The only option at the Home Depot here was to buy a 5.0 Ah battery w/charger. That's way more capacity than I need. Maybe Milwaukee has some garden tools I can use to help use the battery more frequently.

The garden tools tend to need the 9.0Ah batteries.

Look at LED work lights or perhaps a cordless angle grinder if you want to expand your arsenal.

I already bought into Home Depot's Ryobi line for pretty much everything else. However much you try to just have one type of charging station, it will ultimately fail. Now I have Oregon 36V, Black & Decker 20V, Ryobi 40V, Ryobi 18 V, and Milwaukee 18 V chargers taking up counter space. Unless I get a Milwaukee garden tool, that 5 Ah 18V battery will probably last a year on one charge. The only garden tool I need is non-poled hedge trimmer, so I guess that will be it.

Thanks all for your suggestions. I still don't know what torque was required to remove the seized axle nut, but I'm guessing in the 800-1200 ft-lbs range. I suppose it would have been worse had it had loctite. The 10 mm allen bolts on my Benz had loctite the impact struggled a bit with those. A word of caution for these stuck bolts/nuts, be sure to press the impact's socket in hard and continue pushing in as it impacts. I noticed this tendency to assume the allen socket would stay in the allen bolt, but the jerking from the impacts will let you strip the heads if you don't keep pushing the socket in as it impacts.