Putting on a hitch and doing some preventative rustproofing while I'm in there so I'm taking off the bumper brackets and I got 7 out of the 8 bolts out. The last one, on the lower left corner of the left side bracket turns fine but does not come out. Since these bolts go into the body and doesn't have nuts attached on the other side to hold all I can do is spin it. In any case the leaf spring bolts are in pretty close proximity so can't get behind. I tried using vise grips and turning while pulling but no good.
Any ideas on how to get this out? Worst case I guess would be to drill it out with a cobalt drill bit.


Lower left corner spins

 

It's always that last bolt! I have no suggestions but I feel your pain. Good luck!

 

Try pulling on the bracket as you turn the bolt, or if you can get something under the lip, pry the bracket from behind as you turn the bolt. Doesnt always work tho.

You could grind the head off, but then you have to fish the rest out somehow. You could try drilling whats left. You could use a nutsert afterwards. Or skip it and leave it with 7 bolts. You could always tack that corner down once its back together.

Which works best i couldnt say.

 

I put on some vice grips and pulled on it while turning but didn't help. Pulled on it hard enough to rock the suspension.
I'm going to try to wedge something in there if possible but it is on pretty tight.
Leaving the bolt in there forever makes it impossible to get that bracket off and that was the point of this exercise.
Can't really get anything in there to grind off the head but can drill it out if I have to - which it looks like is the likely outcome.

Any other suggestions are welcome. I'll post the outcome when I'm done.

 

A little late, but an update...
Had to carefully drill out that bolt. Got a zinc chromate grade 8/10.9 bolt and nut that fit beautifully through the new hole with decent room behind it to hold the nut.
All is nice and solid now and ready for the next project(s).


New hardware

 

while you have things apart, I would put new nut insets in.

 

The nut-sert on the right side took a bunch of pb blaster and a few hours of cleaning the threads with a small wire brush and then slowing inserting an extra new bolt turning it in a half turn clockwise and then backing it out a quarter turn and then after every full revolution or two pulling it out, cleaning again and then starting the half turn in, quarter turn out process again. Several week wait on new nut-serts so I figured I'd try it that way and it worked well.
Left side didn't have nut-serts so used the metal pieces, carriage bolts and fish wire that came with the Curt hitch which was super simple.