Stymied working on front half shaft, torque plate removal

[jeff.built]

Ok, nube here and my '85 is only a hatchback, but I do love it. Hope to find a 4wd this spring and go all in. Finally needing to replace the drivers side half shaft and am stuck at the moment. Using a combination of book procedure and tips I've gleaned off of this site.

My Problem: Have the axle nut off and caliper and was working on removing the caliper mount (referred to as torque plate in the pdf manual ). Snapped the lower bolt; of only 2; and have been trying to drive the sheared shaft out. There is no "cap" remaining from the bolt and a there is a good 1/8" of void where I've been able to drive it some. I assume would bring the torque plate along with it? With one bolt out and what should be no threads in mounting plate, it just seems like I'm missing something. Barely a crack between the torque plate and the part it is mounted in front of and the diagram I have does not show enough.


Question: Does the torque plate "lift" straight off of the mounting plate (perpendicular) or does it somehow lock in and have to slide out? Could there be another bolt that I am missing? If it makes a difference, outer joint flew apart in driveway at slow speed, did jam up a bit at first and had to work to push it to where I'm working on it.

Thanks in advance to anyone able to understand my situation and help me out of it!

[Petros]

Welcome to the list!

The threaded part is the torque plate, the mount in the hub or steering knuckle are through holes. Once the bolts are out it should just lift out. If you remove the caliper and the pads you might get enough play to remove it with broken bolt on it. Otherwise you would have to cut off the sub of the bolt to get it to clear. With the rotor in place you will not be able to slide out the toque plate. It might be easier to remove the whole assembly and than you can drill out the remainder of the bolt.

Try putting old ATF on it, it makes a great penetrating oil (better than the store bought stuff). You might consider just replacing the torque plate from one from a wrecking yard, or just go with the brake up-grade with '92 or newer rotors and calipers, which mean you will replace the torque plates anyway.

Good luck with it, sounds like a troublesome problem.

[jeff.built]

Thanks for the response and it has been resolved. I was able to drive out the seized bolt with plate attached. It did crack on the front rail so for now I'll just deal with that. Junk yards close by are not too great with older parts but at the worst, a new caliper and torque plate are $45 or so locally.

For the rest of the job I found an older post that bypasses the prescribed method.

3. Remove two 12mm bolts from bottom of ball joint, make sure steering
is at full lock, and use pry bar to free bottom of hub from ball
joint.
4. Slide and wiggle end of spline shaft from hub by swinging strut
assembly out as far as it will go. Sometimes penetrating oil helps if
spline is rusty.
5. Use pry bar on groove in flange of inner cv joint, usually just
pops out. Than whole half shaft assembly falls out.

Does that sound about right or is it too simplified for my first attempt? Thanks again for the advice and welcoming to the group.

[Petros]

that is the process I use (I think I wrote that in fact). I have found it not necessary to remove the brakes or the steering tie rod, you get just enough swing in the strut to remove the spline shaft. The FSM always tells you to remove WAY more stuff than you have to.

Good luck with it.

[keith]

I always just undid the bolts for the strut. I did the lower ball joints once, easy to get off, not so easy to get back on. Be sure to mark the position of the concentric washer on the top bolt of the strut or plan on doing an alignment.