I stripped 2/6 bolts. The others came out easy with my impact gun so idk what went wrong. One of them that stripped was the first bolt that I used the brand new hex key on lol… any ways on getting it out? It’s stalling my differential removal job. (Last thing attaching it to the car) I don’t weld.

 

I avoid using an impact at all on stuff like this. Hex bolts can get stuff down in them and can be easy to round out.

Have you made sure they are cleaned out well? If not, there is a chance if you dig out any crud you can get a hex wrench further down in and get some purchase to turn them out. If so liberally use penetrating oil on both sides to help removal.

You can try the needle nose vice grip route but not sure if you can get enough grip on them. Same goes with trying to grind flats on each side to grab with a wrench.

Possible that you can get a bolt extractor in them (or drill the hole round and then use one) but be very careful there. If you break an extractor in there it will make that even harder to get out as you cannot drill one of those out easily.

Otherwise if all else fails I would try to carefully cut the heads off with small cutting tool like a dremel, or even drill the heads till they come off, then remove the shaft and get a set of vice grips on the remaining stub and turn them out.

 

Cut the head off the bolt. Massively easy.

An impact is less likely to strip these as compared to hand tools. But you gotta ensure the angle of your dangle is correct.

 

I got a couple tough ones out by having a hex tool on the bolt and a set of super tight vice grips on the outside surface, turning at the same time. If that doesn't work drill out/cut off.

 

if I cut it off will I be able to remove the driveshaft from the diff? There are two bolts that are stripped and if I cut the head wont part of the stem still be stuck inside??

 

The threads only go into one side, so when you cut the heads, the shaft will just slide off and expose the portion of the bolt sticking out. Then you can grab that and turn it out. Referencing my crappy sketch below, before is on the left. After you cut the head of the bolt off and remove the shaft, you will have something like the pic on the right. Only one flange is threaded.

 

Will the drive shaft be able to slide off though? Wont the drive shift still be mated to the diff surface. theres 2 bolts stripped I’m not sure if it’ll move back off(towards driver) thanks for explaining things though!!

 

yeah, it'll move back pretty dang far

you can also remove the bolts from the trans side and slide it forward.

 

Its a shaft, with splined ends. On each of these splines is a cv joint, and its this joint that has the flange that bolts to diff and trans. So the fat, shaft portion can slide along either of these splines.

You can even slide it back to gain more clearance to get better purchase on these bolts to remove/install them.

Or slide back (forward actually) the whole thing to gain clearance to get diff flange past the remaining bolt stubs after cutting of their heads. It'll just slide along the front (trans side) splines.