HELP! Broke body bolt

[Cburd61]

By the way, if you weren’t 2800 miles away, I would help try to get it out.

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[MSFTMatt]

By the way, if you weren’t 2800 miles away, I would help try to get it out.

Ha! It’s the thought that counts!!

 

[DeOhYouGe]

Correct and that is pretty much with any modern medical electronic implant device. They are shielded pretty well but there is still a emitter and receiver function of the devices that are susceptible to EMI interference in the right conditions.

When I got my device some years ago, I had to go through a audit questionnaire of my working history and daily access to RF type energy. Working in Avionics Engineering design and manufacturing, I have to watch what environments I am in. People in trades that use either direct energy devices and unshielded EMI environments like plasma cutting, arc welding and use of tools like the already mentioned induction coil heaters have to take even more precautions or in some cases, find another trade.

Whoo-boy! While I got lucky with the body bolts on my RSE JTRD, this thread has stimulated a forgotten memory. I had worked as a Weapon Control System Tecnician (WCS) in the Air Force. I worked on F-4E/G Phantoms. The WCS system is mostly working on radar, pulsed and continuous wave RF radiation. The amount of power transmitted was enormous. Enough to light up the fluorescent bulbs in lighting fixtures within empty buildings at over 100 yds away, heat the steel toe cap in combat boots, needing them to be removed faster than he'll. Best example was during air shows we would have a mock-up (test rig, for troubleshooting, everything on the jet, except the jet) and we would sweep the crowd just once and watch every flash bulb, flash cube, and flash bar on cameras pop "for no reason". Fyi, old days camera flash were magnesium coils like steel wool one use flash!

 

[chorky]

To have the probes implanted. It's a 5 step process.
1st step to have 4 tiny screws put into your skull. One at each corner. This is like surveyor's markers for the next step.
2nd step a week later. Complete brain scan. They are mapping your brain. Using this mapping. They will make a skull cap to fit your head. This is the drill jig to accurately drill into your skull.
3rd step is about 2 week from the 2nd step. Need time to make the skull cap. They will put you asleep. place the cap on your head. Drill the holes in your skull. Place the probes into your brain. Then they wake you up. Test the probes and make adjust on the depth of the probes. Put you back asleep. The wires for the probes are not hooked up at this time. They are bunched up under your skin.
4th step is a week later were they connect the wires to the control devise. They run the wires under the skin. Behind your ear, down to your chest, where they have implanted the control devise. They will make some small adjustments to control the tremors.
5th, you go back in to the doctor's office a couple of weeks later. This is where they fine out what your upper limits are. There is a shit load of adjustments. They find out just how much your can stand then back it down enough to control the tremors.

The wifey has been happy with the results. At first, she wasn't. Bunch of second thoughts about having it done. But she is glad that she had it done.

Oh man, that sounds fun. How did your wife do through that? Docs want to do a full brain map for me as well. But were surprised to find out the x-ray showed 9 screws and some titanium threads flapping in the wind when the last surgery was supposed to remove ALL the hardware and metal. :-/ Hopefully her surgeries were without complications!!

UPDATE: no good news. Local shop had my truck all day without success. They tried lifting the cab a little but that said there wasn’t enough bolt sticking out to grab on to. Said they’d need to lift the whole cab about 2 feet.
So now what? These are going to be the most expensive rock sliders of all time.

@ShadowsPapa didnt the dealer have to lift the cap of your wife's JL to extract the bolt? I thought that was pretty much SOP on the JT/JL at this point.

 

[Rusty PW]

Oh man, that sounds fun. How did your wife do through that? Docs want to do a full brain map for me as well. But were surprised to find out the x-ray showed 9 screws and some titanium threads flapping in the wind when the last surgery was supposed to remove ALL the hardware and metal. :-/ Hopefully her surgeries were without complications!!

She was nervous the whole time. She was full of questions and second guessing herself about doing it. When she talked to a few people who had it done. That helped her a lot.

 

[PuddleJumper]

I'd rather use an impact.

I think it's easier to snap a bolt with a breaker bar than it is an impact.

less likely to snap but more likely to round the head off. At least in my experience. Shitty sockets may be more to blame than the impact tho.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

@ShadowsPapa didnt the dealer have to lift the cap of your wife's JL to extract the bolt? I thought that was pretty much SOP on the JT/JL at this point.

the JLU was fine - the left front was the toughest of all, took forever on it - heat and try, heat and try, heat and try, but the JLU got done (with help of a forum member/friend doing some of the heavy lifting to save my back)

The JT is the one with the broken bolt.
I got mixed messages on that one. To this day no one knows, or will tell, if it was lifted or not to get that bolt out.
The service advisor said "the tech said the cab will have to be lifted to get the bolt out" and then later he said "the tech said he didn't end up lifting the cab to get the bolt out".
The did remove the left side step - I know this because the wiring "looked different" and they had the step brackets under the big body bolt washer in one spot instead of between the head of the bolt and the washer. I had to resolve that by pulling the step away from the truck to get that bracket out and in the order it belonged under the body bolt head.
But I saw no proof or evidence the cab was ever off. The right side step was fine and appeared untouched unless they did such a good job I wasn't able to tell?
So - in the end, I can't prove it was lifted off and I can't prove it wasn't.
They said it was necessary, then said it wasn't necessary.
The work order and paperwork don't specify other than to fix a body bolt.
The service advisor said "I told you it would be $xxx and it ended up taking a lot longer. I feel really bad about that so I'm cutting the charge down to $yyy" and he took off over 250 from the final bill.
(that's another reason I like that shop)

If I trade JTs ever in the near or far future - have induction heater, will use. (after taking off ring, hearing aids, etc. and if I go ahead with the next step tremor treatment, I'll have to hire someone to come here and use that induction heater.)

less likely to snap but more likely to round the head off. At least in my experience. Shitty sockets may be more to blame than the impact tho.

Impact isn't your friend on these body bolts. Been down that road too many times in the past, and also thought, what the @#$ - give it a try. Nope. No good.
If your socket is even up to Menards quality, you aren't going to round these big bolt heads. Ain't gonna happen. But an impact will snap the bolt. With a bar you can feel flex in the bolt and use your brain (electrodes or not) to know when to stop. Experience. No way I'd impact these after my experiences (and I tried). In order for an impact to get them loose, you'll be at the "break it off, sucka" setting.
Just do it right - heat, and back and forth with a bar. If an impact wrench was the answer, FCA might have suggested that. You can't get a feel for where the bolt is at with things, or whether or not the locking compound is letting loose or not with an impact, until you have stressed that bolt beyond reuse.
Use what you want, but mine won't see an impact unless I've worked the bolts enough the locking compound is not working. I could use an impact on my JT body bolts now because the locking compound isn't holding and they will easily come loose (with some effort, anyway)

She was nervous the whole time. She was full of questions and second guessing herself about doing it. When she talked to a few people who had it done. That helped her a lot.

I've watched your posts on this with great interest...... you have no idea.
I've also noted the "mapping of the brain" bit because with my conditions, the structure is a bit different. I've lost track of the number of doctors who have said "that shouldn't be happening" or "I'm stumped, if you come up with any ideas, let me know" or "that's not possible" (and yet, there it is, so it must be possible).

 

[PuddleJumper]

Impact isn't your friend on these body bolts. Been down that road too many times in the past, and also thought, what the @#$ - give it a try. Nope. No good.
If your socket is even up to Menards quality, you aren't going to round these big bolt heads. Ain't gonna happen. But an impact will snap the bolt. With a bar you can feel flex in the bolt and use your brain (electrodes or not) to know when to stop. Experience. No way I'd impact these after my experiences (and I tried). In order for an impact to get them loose, you'll be at the "break it off, sucka" setting.
Just do it right - heat, and back and forth with a bar. If an impact wrench was the answer, FCA might have suggested that. You can't get a feel for where the bolt is at with things, or whether or not the locking compound is letting loose or not with an impact, until you have stressed that bolt beyond reuse.
Use what you want, but mine won't see an impact unless I've worked the bolts enough the locking compound is not working. I could use an impact on my JT body bolts now because the locking compound isn't holding and they will easily come loose (with some effort, anyway)

Oh I'm not touching body bolts if i don't have too. And if I do, they are getting PB blaster over night and then cooked within an inch of bubbling paint or melting the bushing. On the brightside, at least Jeep made sure your body wasn't gonna rip off 20k down the road while on a trail. That body ain't going nowhere.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

Oh man, that sounds fun. How did your wife do through that? Docs want to do a full brain map for me as well. But were surprised to find out the x-ray showed 9 screws and some titanium threads flapping in the wind when the last surgery was supposed to remove ALL the hardware and metal. :-/ Hopefully her surgeries were without complications!!

It's one thing to miss stitches, which a doctor I used to go to did in my fingers years ago. A family member who is a teacher of nursing and is in my opinion, the best nurse I've ever met, asked me how my fingers were doing. I said they still hurt like heck and there was still some swelling. She looked and said no wonder, there's still stitches buried down in there (fingers and thumb barely survived a table saw, ER was a joke beyond belief, and doctor didn't seem to know just how bad it was in the end so some things never got reconnected)

Anyway, I can't imagine finding that out after going through surgery of the head to remove all metals then later, oops, guess we missed some.
OMG - I'd be on the other side of unhappy, for sure.

 

[Minty JL]

Above is proof there's a lot of smart people here.

Hence the reason I enjoy this forum so much; every contributing member of this place brings some type of experience or knowledge to this forum. I don't using "contributing" lightly either, they/we/us will provide documentation or data points that prove validity to the point/topic being discussed.

So cheers to that

 

[Minty JL]

Oh I'm not touching body bolts if i don't have too. And if I do, they are getting PB blaster over night and then cooked within an inch of bubbling paint or melting the bushing. On the brightside, at least Jeep made sure your body wasn't gonna rip off 20k down the road while on a trail. That body ain't going nowhere.

Same, but if I need to I will buy an induction heater to avoid the collateral damages

 

[PuddleJumper]

Same, but if I need to I will buy an induction heater to avoid the collateral damages

I have one, it can still heat the bolt up enough that the bolt will transfer heat into any surrounding it has physical contact with and quickly.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

Would this work?

Did anyone catch your idea and respond?
If you can get the first drill bit perfectly centered, and gradually increase size and are patient as heck (as these are fairly hard bolts and quite long, depending on where they broke off) then you could drill them out, so to speak. But you aren't going to get a tool in there and extract them by unscrewing them downward. There's a lot of bolt above that captured nut and it's also got locking compound on it. FCA owns 51% stock in LocTite Corp, I suspect. The amount of locker some people find on those bolts is unreal. Not all, but quite a few show locking compound on all threads, to what I personally consider "excess".
But - you could indeed drill perfectly centered and force the top end of the bolt up and out if you don't mind it being up in there for perpetuity. (depending on the location of the bolt, that is)

 

[chorky]

It's one thing to miss stitches, which a doctor I used to go to did in my fingers years ago. A family member who is a teacher of nursing and is in my opinion, the best nurse I've ever met, asked me how my fingers were doing. I said they still hurt like heck and there was still some swelling. She looked and said no wonder, there's still stitches buried down in there (fingers and thumb barely survived a table saw, ER was a joke beyond belief, and doctor didn't seem to know just how bad it was in the end so some things never got reconnected)

Anyway, I can't imagine finding that out after going through surgery of the head to remove all metals then later, oops, guess we missed some.
OMG - I'd be on the other side of unhappy, for sure.

it is a real problem. Its not just ‘some’. But 9. 9 screws. And some pieces of titanium cord (think of baling wire but titanium not steel).

the whole point for the second surgery and removal of hardware was to get rid of a biofilm that was impossible to kill without removing metal. Not to mention my skull bone marrow was infected, didnt even know that was a thing, which required 9+ weeks of central line of some pretty heavy meds to kill it after more skull was cut out. Removal of hardware was to prevent a re-infection. Biofilms almost never go away because there is no blood flow in metal to kill said bacteria. So basically, surgery #2 will probably result in a third at some point, just my assumption.

It took 4 years to finally find a doc (a reconstructive plastic surgeon) that knew what the recurring ulcer on my head was. Everyone thought it was just a pimple conveniently located on top of where the craniotomy was performed. I am lucky the infection did not penetrate the dura and get into my brain, or blood for that matter since the marrow was infected.

it will be interesting though to see what the brain mapping shows from repeated tbi’s

 

[ShadowsPapa]

I have one, it can still heat the bolt up enough that the bolt will transfer heat into any surrounding it has physical contact with and quickly.

The point of the induction heater is "quickly".
The faster you heat the target - in this case, that bolt, the less time there is to transfer heat to surrounding objects.

It's something I've shown when soldering brush leads to motor frames or ends - a smaller soldering gun will get the job done, but the heat transfer to surrounding parts is too much. Ushing a much higher wattage gun I get the brush lead soldered fine and hardly heat any of the other parts at all.

The induction heater works by concentrating the heat on the target - and doing it quickly, so there's less time for the heat from the bolt to get to the objects it is in contact with. A torch loses a lot of heat to the surrounding things. It works, but you get other parts a lot hotter. Heat transfer takes time, so the faster you get that bolt hot and loose, the less you heat the surrounding parts like that rubber mount.

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