The Wheels Have Come Off

Another productive day in the garage. I put the front of the LandCruiser up on jack stands and pulled off the front tires to give me a bit more room to work while removing the fenders.

Then I started removing bolts to get the fenders off. Any bolt I could get to loosen broke off. The others wouldn’t budge. The rusty bolts is the most frustrating part of the entire restoration. Removing the fenders should only take minutes, but the rust has made it take days. Here is a photo of today’s broken bolt pile.

Out of the 8 bolts I still need to remove to get the fenders off, 2 are broken, 4 have the heads stripped so that the socket wrench won’t work on them, and 2 of them are inaccessible until I remove part of the steering system.

Here is a photo of the part of the steering system I need to temporarily remove to get to the inaccessible bolts on the driver’s side

The passenger’s side is a much clearer path, but the bolt heads are stripped. I started cutting them off, but the are in a hard spot to get to

Although it was a frustrating day I feel like I am making forward progress. I hit all the bolts with PB Blaster and will try again tomorrow.