Is this possible?

[yzstud]

I was in the process of of replacing my front main when I stumbled upon a freak like situation. After my 1/2 inch IR impact couldn't zip off my harmonic balancer bolt I whipped out my 30 inch long 3/4 inch breaker bar while me an assistant both tugged on it with. It didn't come off

Then my brother grabbed an 18 inch cheater bar to slide over my 30 inch 3/4 breaker bar. He pushed on it from the top while I pulled from the bottom. Then the unthinkable happened, while trying to break the bolt loose i noticed that we bent my engine stand

Then it was time to get serious, I supported the bottom of the engine to prevent flexing of the engine stand, and we both tugged on the breaker bar with everything we both had, and we broke my 3/4 breaker bar :frantic:

At this point i was very very very upset that i couldn;t get my bolt off, I walked away and decided I would let my dad have a crack at it at his work becuz he has access to a 3/4 impact.

The next day, being yesterday, I stopped at my dads work and he said yeah no prob I will be able to get it off. I said, "yeah i hope so, thats why I am here." He grabs the companies napa brand 3/4 inch impact and tries it out on it, and to his surprise it wouldn't budge at all. I wasn't surprised though, it figures something like this would happen to me after all, something like this always happens when you are doing a big car related project.

Anyways, after that lord behold, he grabbed his personal snap-on 1 inch impact, I felt happy, I knew that bolt was gonna come off then. Boy oh boy was i wrong!!! His own 1 inch impact wouldn't even budge that bolt. It was priceless, the shear look of WTF on his face

He looked at me and said no way, that impact is capable of 400+ ft lbs of tq.
I'm like yeah right, he went and grabbed his tq wrench and sure shit, he set it to 400 ft lbs, and the damn wrench beeped!!!!!!!

A minute later he grabbed the oxy-act torch and heated it for 30 seconds and then it very easily zapped off with the 1 inch impact. :woohoo: Boy oh boy, I was the happiest person on earth yesterday

My 3 questins are
1. when we heated the bolt it didn't even turn red, it just stayed blue, what kind of metal is the balancer bolt made out of?
2. What grade of bolt is it that it had 400+ ft lbs and didn't break?
3. What kind of :asskick: fuc**** idiot tightens the balancer bolt to this much torque?
there was no signs of thread lock
and the bolt looked brand new

 

[sdpatt]

It's not likely that the bolt was torqued down more than the 113-126 lb-ft, but that large included washer on the head of the bolt can corrode and bond onto the damper. With a large bonded surface about 2" in diameter in addition to the bolt threads, it will almost always require more than 126 lb-ft to break that thing loose. I have always had success with the starter bump method. Sometimes it has taken several bumps, but it has always worked. With the engine out of the car, that option is not available. The heat helped to break the bond. Glad to hear it worked.

 

[yzstud]

the engine was "supposedly" rebouilt just before I bought it and the bolt looks brand new, so i doubt it had already bonded to the balancer
or could it have?

 

[93rev2sev]

one drop of loctite on the underside flat of the washer could explain all of this. Add a little heat to melt the loc-tite and voila.

 

[shovermont]

i agree with post above^^^^^^^^ but damn 400 foot pounds, if it was loctite it was put on pretty well.

 

[hawkeye18]

Loc-tite+rust+heat cycling = 8,000,000 lb/ft of torque required to get this bolt off. I can't count the number of people I've heard snapping wrenches/cheater bars/breaker bars and breaking impact guns trying to get this bolt off. Oh, and rounding off the bolt, which makes it 314,159,265,357,968 times harder to get off. Unless you have a welder.

I, too, am surprised that so few bolts have been broken off. They are some hella bolts.

 

[K-Dawg]

I, too, am surprised that so few bolts have been broken off. They are some hella bolts.

Not only are they stout, but most of the resistance keeping the bolt from turning is coming from the large head of the bolt, not the threads.