geared

so I am in the process of taking my motor out of my car. Pretty much everything is done with the exception of detaching the transmission from the motor. I ran into a jam when trying to taking the driveshaft(prop shaft) out of the car. Those bolts are really jammed on there and i have been able to get a few loose with a lot of PB Blaster and torque. However it seems that 2 bolts one of each end of the driveshaft have stripped. Another two bolts one on each end are nearly impossible to get access to with enough room to wrench them free.

I know its pretty stupid to ask is there any way to do this job without detaching the driveshaft from the tranny?

ry4nolson

Yes you have to detach it from the tranny. Not necessarily from the rearend though. Once it's loose from the tranny you can just prop it up with a jack stand or 2x4 or somethin.

If you can't access 2 of the bolts (this may seem obvious) you just need to spin the shaft. I'm assuming you don't have the rear of the car up in the air to do this?

zeroptzero

My bolts on the diff side were really tight, we got them off by using a hex head socket and a vice-grip with two guys turning on them at the same time. Once we got the diff side bolts off we left the tranny side installed and moved the tranny off with the prop. shaft attached. You can get away with only doing one side.

geared

I tried to go the HEX socket route with no success. What would yall suggest for getting a stripped bolt free. I was thinking about cutting it but then I don't know how I am exactly going to get the rest of the bolt out.

zeroptzero

it is the back of the head of the bolt that sticks to the metal washer through galvanic corrossion, if you can drill the head off the rest should come out easily. It is quite common to strip some of the bolts so I anticipated having to do some or all of them prior to removing my tranny. Mine started to strip so I stopped before it got worse, then we did the two person approach one with a vice grip and one with a ratchet and socket, turning at the same time. A good friend of mine suggested cutting two sides of the bolts flat and then you can get a vice grip on them easily as the bolt would be squared off. You will need to use a cutting tool to get two sides flat. The other option would be to drill the head just enough to get it off the bolt, the rest of the bolt should spin out once the head is off. I'm sure others may have more suggestions.