cmuman

Over the weekend I installed 2in lift schackles on my 96 xj. I read all the forums about how to get the dreaded upper bolt undone. I pb blasted the bolts for a few days in prep. When it came time to do the removal, the bolt still got stuck in the bushing. Instead of cutting the old shackle and getting a pipe wrench on the bushing we did something else that worked really well, so I thought I should share to help anyone else in my predicament.

Here's what I did.
I found a medium size tap and drilled out the proper size hole directly into the upper part of the shackle. I then threaded the tap in the hole until it bottomed out on the bushing. We then proceeded to turn the bolt keeping pressure on the tap. The tip of the tap eventually caught the open slot in the bushing and helped pop the bushing off the rusty bolt. We just kept tension on the tap and kept turning the bolt out. ( Long winded by the way) It came right out and took a lot less time than cutting and grinding I had done on a previous situation like this.

Just wanted to share...hope it helps someone

Marks2000XJ

Maybe some people on here can figure out what you are talking about here but this newb can't?

Can you explain this a little more? I am not really catching on to what you were doing here. I have the same problem. Arghhhh!!!

freegdr

what he did was drill a hloe thru the shackle and tapeed it so the tap was pushing the bushing in and screwed the bolt out of the dushing

jeepxj19

Woulda been alot better if u included pics

peep

Thanks cmuman for sharing the tip.

XJ-92

Don't mean to thread jack but I'm doing this right now and used a lot of pb blaster and snapped the upper bolt where it starts to thread in. How do I get it out I got the old shackle out but not the rest of the bolt