sill cover & trim panel removal

[ndevans]

Pretty obvious to some (nay, most people) but not to me, having just spent 5 hrs battling the nuts & bolts that hold on the sill covers & u shaped pieces of metal trim under the doors .............if you loosen the nuts & bolts a bit you can slide off the u-shaped piece of trim, then you can get a proper socket wrench on the bolt head instead of fiddling about with two 7/16 spanners.........
It wasn't till I got to the last two bolts on the n/s (having done the o/s first) that I suddenly thought "hang on, the holes in the trim piece are not holes they are slots.....eureka"!!!

hey ho.

cheers,
Neil

[8009STEVE]

Or just use an angle grinder and replace the nuts and bolts.

[alex_holden]

When you put the bolts back either use new ones or use a wire brush to clean the rust out of the threads, and dip them in Waxoyl or Dinitrol before assembly. That should make them easy to undo in the future.

[aupickup]

well after many years of being there
i have got all mine undone
as with all bolts with captive nuts
not bad

[overider]

The absolute best way is to replace them with stainless steel set screws and nylock nuts.

[bigginger]

It isn't, you know. Stainless and mild steel will react/solidify if (and, I'd say, when) they contact, and given that the area is directly exposed to road muck, I wouldn't use them.
a

[overider]

It isn't, you know. Stainless and mild steel will react/solidify.
a

I’m not disagreeing with you, But I have never in all my years of engineering experienced mild steel and stainless reacting that bad they solidify together. I have the opposite in fact when striping old parts apart and it has had one of two stainless fixings among the old mild steel and the only ones that open is the stainless ones.
Surely if you when one step further and smeared a bit of grease between the fixings it would be fine.

[Kevin]

stainless steel set screws and nylock nuts

Agreed with the Stainless screws but not sure there is enough room to use set screws though but hex heads are fine with copper grease.

[alex_holden]

Are you talking about cap screws? Set screws AKA grub screws are threaded devices that apply pressure to something (eg. to prevent a pulley turning on a drive shaft).

[overider]

No sorry. If you buy a bolt you get a thread that only goes 3/4 the way and the rest is the shank. If you buy a set screw its the same but the thread goes all the way to the top. As any bolts you get hexagon set screw of any standard lengths.