Ok, I know the title sounds like a seventies B-movie title.  After a couple of weeks of thinkering on this website I needed to get my hands dirty and attacked a little car project I had on my workbench, which became more involved as it usually does...

We all, at one time of another, experience that one sticky nut, bolt or part that will not give in. I usually squirt some wd40, Liquid Wrench and/or PB-blaster on it (or some kind of coctail of the above) and walk away from it, let the penetrant try to do it's magic and try again the next evening after work, applying heat from a Propane of Mapp-torch and applying force with a spanner, impact, hammer or puller depending on the situation. Sometimes I need to repeat this ritual multiple times and when gentle negocations don't work, I either need to raise the force factor or like in this case I needed to fabricate a special tool.

The nut in question here is holding the front bearing on the input shaft of a 4-speed gearbox (I am rebuiling the box but that's probably another story) The nut is not that impressive, about 3/8 inch thick but rather wide needing a 1 7/8 spanner or socket. Problem is an input shaft of a BN2 gearbox is quite rare so I don't want to damage the shaft. I could probably have sacrificed the nut but the regular sources list this nut as 'NA' so this was only going to be my last resort.

I fired off a question on the 'Healey email' list and got a couple of responses. After a couple of un-succesfull attempts using the classic tricks above, I followed the advice of Dave Porter of Porter's Customs in Albuquerque. I bought a 1 7/8 socket ($5 on ebay) and a steel pipe, cut the socket in half and welded the pipe in between, effectively creating a 12" deep 'deep throat' socket. After protecting the shaft with duct tape I secured it in the vise, applied more heat and penetrant and fired up the good old impact wrench. I still needed to up the pressure to 100psi and after a couple attempts the nut finally became loose. Note this is a lefty coming off clockwise. Now the shaft and nut are cleaned and with a little flick the nut will rotate all the way down the threads, it's hard to imagine now how this nut was holding on so tight. BTW the shaft looks great, no issue with the gear, dogteeth, splines, sealing or bearing surfaces. I just need to clean it up a bit more and polish the bearing surface that goes in the pilot bushing.

Morale of the story for me is that the most important tool to attack this job was the Healey email list. You can subscribe to the 'list' at www.team.net and/or find a massive amount of knowledge in the archive.

If you have similar experiences or tips and tricks on how to attack rusty nuts, bolts or parts you can add them using the comment function below or write your own 'blog article'.

...and if you (clubmember) have a use for this tool, just give me a shout using the contact (webmasters) at the left.

Bert