Took the car over to my mates house to work on it this afternoon. We tried desperately to hammer a 19mm socket onto the bolt, with absolutely no luck. 5 minutes of hammering got the socket on perhaps 3mm of the way. We tried a 20mm socket but it's too big for the bolt, once hammered on it just turns around the bolt without removing it.
We figured I had no other choice than to get a bolt remover. Popped to Halfrauds, £16.99 for a bolt removal tool. We couldn't get that to work either! Problem is to get it to thread you need to REALLY force the tool onto the bolt, AND turn it at the same time. We couldn't push with enough force to get it to thread, I imagine you really need in impact wrench or something similar to be honest.
At this point it didn't look like we were getting them off, so I rung a few garages up. It's about £20 a bolt assuming they can easily get it off. If not they'll need drilling out which will be in the hundreds.
We ended up calling it a day, we couldn't get a damn nut off his Porsche engine either, so looks like he needs to buy an impact wrench
I stopped off at ATS on the way home on the off chance, they only bloody managed to find the god damn adaptor!!! Feeling a mixture of
and
at the same time. Very angry as they told me they put it back and definitely didn't have it. Only for them to now find it in a f*cking draw in the reception!!!
So I'm £27 down on new locking bolts, and £17 down on the removal tool. Not too worried about the new locking bolts as they're a lot better than the ones I had, turns out mine are on their last legs.
Crossing my fingers Halfrauds will let me return the removal tool tomorrow, I've packaged it all up again so it looks like new. Only problem is I've lost the receipt
FML!!
