>These bolts are made with heads that shear off at a given
>torque so the bad guys can't take them out and run off with your car.
>Well, the good guys can't get them out either. The book says to use a
>chisel to spin them out or drill them and use an easy out.
>
>Has anybody done this successfully?
Mark:
I've done it, and boy, did it suck!! I recall lying in the car with my
head stuffed into the footbox, weilding a hammer and a chisel. The trouble
is, among other things, that to get at the bolts, you have to have the
column loose to rotate the column around to expose the heads to below.
That's fine, except that with the column loose, you can't exert the kind of
force necessary. I finally got them out, and when I reassembled
everything, I replaced those bolts with socket head cap screws of the same
thread... an easy find. For one thing, my experience is that those
steering locks don't prevent theft anyway, for another, most thieves won't
be able to access the bolts anyway, so who cares what kind of head they
have on 'em!!!??? I had a 1976 Datsun B210 with a steering column lock,
and it was stolen twice!!! The trouble that I had when I did my column is
getting the rubber column bushings into the column housing... I ruined the
new ones in the process, so I made up some out of delrin and used socket
head set screws (3/8" D) to locate them. Well, the bushings are still
there, but now they're just floating around, because all the set screws
have fallen out. I can see doing this all again, now, so if anyone has any
suggestions on how to get the bushings in there, let us all know!!!
So, good luck to you... keep on trying, and get rid of those shear bolts!!
Pete Chadwell
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