Self-locking nuts stripped onto toe control arms - Ideas to get them off

[Woodsy0]

As stated, I was finishing up replacing the seized rear toe control arms per Wret's tech article, and was bolting down the ball joints to the spindle with the enw self-locking nuts that came with the new control arms. I placed a jack under the ball joint to pressurize the taper so that I could get the nut on, and torqued it on with an impact wrench. Howver, I only got about 4 threads down and the nut started spinning freely, and wouldn't go farther down the thread. Note that it wasn't spinning the ball joint shaft either, the nut was simply spinning but not going anywhere. This happened on both ends of the car. I'm guessing that I stripped the threads on the nut? I took it for a drive, and on large bumps, I hear a great deal of clunking in the back, from what I'm guessing is from that half inch or so of thread that I wasn't able to fully torque the nut down onto.

Any ideas on how to get the nut off of the thread, and after that, how do properly torque it down the second time around? My only idea was to dremel the nut in half, and then torque it down using a non-locking nut first, removing it, and then using a new locking-nut...

Thanks,
Scott

 

[4BangR-x]

Do whatever you can to get it off, dremel, torch whatever. AND DONT EVER USE AN IMPACT TO PUT STUFF BACK TOGETHER!

 

[wret]

My only idea was to dremel the nut in half, and then torque it down using a non-locking nut first, removing it, and then using a new locking-nut...

That's what I would do. Starting off with a non-locking nut is the usual advice for getting slippery ball joints started.

 

[Woodsy0]

Alright, I used a nut breaker to get the nuts off and tried again, this time using non-locking nuts first. I finally got the rear pass side torqued down (for some reason I think the problem was that I was running out of threads on the ball joint itself, in other words, the nut would just get to the end of the threads and onto a portion of the ball joint that wasn't threaded, and just spin on that...I used two washers to ensure that the nut would be torquing against actual threads, and it seemed to work), but the driver's side is again problematic. I think I may have royally messed up the threads of the ball joint when I was attempting to get the previous stop-nut off...I have a tap and die set and I tried using a die to clean the threads, but I think I may have done more harm than good...I really can't get any size nut to thread easily on it now...

Any advice? Maybe I was using the wrong die size? Is my only option now to replace the ball joint?

Thanks,
Scott

 

[1stGenRocks]

get new balljoints. i know it will be expensive but this isnt something thats worth risking. if the threads are damaged already then the shaft of the joint is much weaker and you risk snapping it.

 

[Woodsy0]

I ended up biting the bullet and getting a new toe control arm, it was only $40 shipped from mitsubishiparts.com so I guess it wasn't that big of a bullet to...well...bite.

Thanks for all the help,
Scott