Hi!
Very frustrated here. Trying to swap out the starter motor, which I think and hope is my issue. It's held on by simply 2 bolts with a 1/2" hex head. The lower one came off fine. The top one... another story.
There's a bit of metal cast into the motor housing itself blocking some movement of a normal, flat wrench; so I've been focusing on using a socket wrench.
But there's very little room to maneuver. There's seemingly something in every direction to block my way.
Now the problem with a socket wrench is that there's very little purchase on the nut: sockets are designed with a taper ground into them, probably to help center the socket, and furthermore: the bolt is close to the housing of the starter motor, so the fat width of the wrench itself puts it at an angle.
The result is that the socket will just spiral off of the nut, every time. The corners are starting to round, as the fruit of my labors. I know that once I can just break that initial seized friction I can get it going, but it hasn't budged!
I've tried a variety of extensions, to get the socket wrench out past the starter motor: but it has to be *just* the right length or I bump into more welded steel. I went out and bought a smaller breaker bar, with a smaller head than my ratchet, in hopes that that wouldn't bump into the motor housing; but it didn't change much.
What should have been any easy 1hr job, has been anything but!
I don't own an air/ impact socket, but I don't see how I'd fit it in there if I did run out to buy one just for this.
Also no room for vise grips. They'd occurred to me though.
I'm thinking about driving out to sears, which is a bit further than lowes/ home depot, and seeing if there's some variety of offset wrench that will be a silver bullet...?
Very frustrated here. Trying to swap out the starter motor, which I think and hope is my issue. It's held on by simply 2 bolts with a 1/2" hex head. The lower one came off fine. The top one... another story.
There's a bit of metal cast into the motor housing itself blocking some movement of a normal, flat wrench; so I've been focusing on using a socket wrench.
But there's very little room to maneuver. There's seemingly something in every direction to block my way.
Now the problem with a socket wrench is that there's very little purchase on the nut: sockets are designed with a taper ground into them, probably to help center the socket, and furthermore: the bolt is close to the housing of the starter motor, so the fat width of the wrench itself puts it at an angle.
The result is that the socket will just spiral off of the nut, every time. The corners are starting to round, as the fruit of my labors. I know that once I can just break that initial seized friction I can get it going, but it hasn't budged!
I've tried a variety of extensions, to get the socket wrench out past the starter motor: but it has to be *just* the right length or I bump into more welded steel. I went out and bought a smaller breaker bar, with a smaller head than my ratchet, in hopes that that wouldn't bump into the motor housing; but it didn't change much.
What should have been any easy 1hr job, has been anything but!
I don't own an air/ impact socket, but I don't see how I'd fit it in there if I did run out to buy one just for this.
Also no room for vise grips. They'd occurred to me though.
I'm thinking about driving out to sears, which is a bit further than lowes/ home depot, and seeing if there's some variety of offset wrench that will be a silver bullet...?
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