Believe it or not - changing front shock upper mounts…

On the driver’s side the shock top nut was VERY hard to remove. Threads were close to being destroyed removing the SAE nut that someone used when replacing the upper mount previously. That’s some good steel and really hard to chase the threads! I put a new 10-1.5 nut on it and a 10-1.5 NyLoc nut on top of that because the threads at the bottom were GONE!

I should have seen it coming - - - On the right side the threads were so gone that the nut would just turn and wouldn’t engage the threads above it. Quite a while later with a Dremel, whole bunch of diamond bits, a punch, small chisel, and some hammers I finally got the nut into two pieces and out. Same fastener arrangement as the other side. At least the threads were easy to chase ;-)

Onward!

 

What worked for me when this happened was to use a very big vise grips to hold the shock rod while removing the upper nut using a wrench.

 

I was trying to (and did) save the shock, but even then - the nut was spinning - the rod was not. As an added bonus the nut is recessed into the upper mount and I couldn’t compress the spring enough to get the nut in the clear to get a cracker on it. I also tried having the spring pressure push the nut into the threads while hitting it with an impact wrench but no joy…