Separating the Sway Bar Link from the Strut

[jluetjen]

(deleted post about the broken spring)

[Jeff Alton]

I got lost reading this where it all went wrong with the sway bar link....

You guys tried an air hammer or heat or both?

We operate in humid climate with coldish winters, never had a problem with the right tools and patience.

[jluetjen]

Jeff; The last post on the previous page is where it all went wrong. You can get aluminum oxide inside the hole where the sway-bar linkage bolts through bearing carrier, and when that happens -- good luck getting it out. The pictures that I posted of the bolt in setu show what this looks like in the hole. This is most prevalent in cars which have been exposed to salt spray. Yes, I tried soaking, an air hammer. heat (propane, map gas) and combinations of heat and hammer and soaking. Nothing was getting that bolt out of the carrier.

I'm not saying that it happens to every car, but when it does happen, the bolt isn't going to be coming out of the hole. Soaking is not going to penetrate that far, and I doubt that heat is going to be useful without reaching levels that will cause issues elsewhere in the assembly -- like the bearings or the struts.

Talking to people around there, this is also a common issue (but not necessarily on Porsche sports cars) on external spare tire carriers on SUVs, where they might have steel studs and aluminum nuts holding the spare tire to the carrier.