leaf spring mount help

[blakdot]

First off i need everyone to go out the their cherokee and look at their leaf spring mount non shackle side, the mount closest to the front. Now examine the way the bolt goes through the eye of the leaf spring and determine how that bolt threads in.

If you said; "well duh, theres a nut welded inside the unibody rail." your partially right. There is a nut and it is welded in there but not inside the frame rail. Its in between the leaf spring mount and the frame rail.

Now ask yourself, if that weld ever broke while you were turning that bolt... What would you do?

The logical plan would be to cut open a slot wide enough to get the welder in there and weld the nut back in place. But heres where it gets tricky. The reason why this happened is because the metal bushing inside the leaf spring was fused to the bolt and was turning with it. The bolt was threading out of the nut but was pushing the bushing into the inside of the mount closest to the head of the bolt. As it was building up pressure it poped the nut off the inside.

So no the bushing is still fused to the bolt and there is a gap between the nut and where it was originally welded. and i cant seem to move the bolt at all and it if try to weld the nut there is a good chance i'll weld it to the bolt, which would be bad.

Any suggestions??

[xjeeper]

zach had that problem and ended up cutting the bolt on each side of the leaf spring eye which would drop the spring out of the way for you to repair the nut situation. sawzall works pretty well.

[KtmRacer419]

ive dealt with this before

twice the bolt seized in the bushing, and i sawzalled the bolt in 2 places and the rest of the bolt just came out finger tight

and twice, both happened

had to do the same, but then cut the little "cup and the bottom with a cut-off wheel, then stick a sawzall up there to cut the end of the bolt off of the spinning nut, then have both pieces fall out. from then i just stuck a nut with a wrench up there and stuck a new bolt in there and all was well

[blakdot]

I've cut the cup on the bottom but i wasnt having much luck. the bolt fits a 13/16 socket pretty nice, but the nut is bigger i believe. I was trying to do it without cutting the bolt, which i've also had to do before but i've never had the nut break its weld before.

The funny part about this is, i just took the leaf springs off my '87 and all 4 bolts just came right out, no problems whatsoever. All 8 leaf spring bolts on my '85 CJ turned right out. Every newer Cherokee i've screwed with i've had problems.