Any tips on how to remove a stubborn front torsion bar? I soaked it in penetrating oil. Clamped onto the end with vice grips. Pounded it from the sides with a plastic mallet. That thing is in there. I got so frustrated, I dropped the entire front suspension to see if I could get a better attack off the car. Still stuck.

As far I as can tell, there is no way to access the other end to pound it out. Only wiggle and pull?
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drive it forward our the front. Itll pop the caps off the front of the Arms but no biggie just clean & tap them back in place.

A couple places sell new end caps if the old ones get lost or damaged too much. Basically like a Welch plug. They have some curvature. By flattening them, it locks them into the torsion bar tube.

I may be buying new a-arms and torsion bars. Today I'm back with the car. I tried:

• Vice grips on torsion bar and pulling
• Hammering the rear exposed part of the torsion bar to drive it through the cap and out the front with BFH
• Drilled a hole in cap at the front and using air chisel to impact it out from front end
• Lots of penatrant oil and propane torch.

I'm guessing if it is rusted in that bad, they both may be damaged beyond reasonable use. Anyone else faced this much resistance?

More of this. Better yet - MAPP gas or oxy-acetylene.

Thanks for the encouragement.

It finally freed up after drilling the cap off, liberal oxy-acetylene application and a lot of banging.

Wow. That was a lot more effort than I expected. I really love the videos where people slide them out with two fingers!

I was expecting the torsions bar to be ate up with rust. Surprisingly not. I'm still not clear why it was so froze up.

Lots of surface area at the spline interface. Doesn’t take much corrosion on the splines to do a wonderful job of gluing parts together. A tiny corrosion ridge at the edge of the splines can also act like a wedge / stopper preventing the splines from sliding.

The heat is needed to expand the LCA Inner Diameter more than the torsion bar Outer Diameter - allowing the parts to separate and slide free.

on the perseverance.

When you reassemble - light coat of grease goes on the entire bar length (to prevent corrosion) but you want to be quite liberal with it at the splines.

Definitely. Anti-seize works well on the splines also. You, too will be able to remove the bar with a few fingers. And then have to clean your fingers.

Remove the a-arm from the car.
Stand it up on something with a hole in it
Now use a BFH

Use a good ball peen hammer as a punch
Hit that with a sledge hammer.
It will come out, if properly supported….one or two good hits will do it

Guys, get a hydraulic press, or friend with one, even the kind from Harbor Freight. It makes much 914 work MUCH easier.

Good idea.