Can this be done? Not sure how long they've been on but i've been chasing the swingarm around the garage floor trying to get leverage on it. I'm thinking maybe an impact gun?

AIR

Yes, it can be done with the biggest (most powerful, not size) impact wrench you can find. 450-600 lb/ft. will get it done. The last one took 10 minutes or so, some penetrant, a little heat, more impact wrench... it came off.

Any chance you can stick the swing arms back on the car temporarily? Then all you'd need is a big ass breaker bar and maybe a big friend to jump on it.

No, my car is at a bodyshop for paint with the oringial swingarms on it. I'm trying to refurb this set and switch them out later.

Get a breaker bar/torque wrench. Put a swing arm under the front suspension of one of your cars. The idea is to get it under the suspension to prevent to much upward movement. Now position yourself with the breaker bar on the nut and protruding out from under the car where you can stand on the bar.

I've removed nuts at least a few times this way when I was once parting cars.

Take the arm , position it on floor.Thread in a couple lug bolts , insert a bar ( crow bar, pry bar, etc ) inbetween the lugs, if you have a propane torch use it to heat up nut to some degree, mapp or actylne would be better for more heat. Heat up nut for a bit , use impact, breaker bar with long cheater pipe , should come off.
I just did this on Thursday to a 914 I'm stripping down, removed the cotter pin, used the mapp tourch setup I have , got nut cherry red in a few spots around nut, took breaker bar with a 3 1/2 foot pipe cheater, came right off with a little effort.
The car is far away from my air , so I decided to give this procedure a try, worked like a charm !!!

Jaxdream

After ya heat it, ya better look for another one....

A lot of hardware (nuts and bolts) are tempered to a specific tensile strength, and heating it changes the carefully engineered-in material properties....

Think of it this way, would you heat the rod bolts and the nuts in a connecting rod to cherry red and then re-use them???? Think the threads on the bolts and the nuts are as strong???? Think the shaft of the heated rod bolt will fail at a lower stress/RPM???

Spray that sucker with PBBlaster, tap it, and spray it again. Air impact tools are best for stubborn bolt removal. It may take several days of spraying and tapping and impact but it will come off.

Kennycringingeverytimesomebodyheattreatshardwarethatcankillyouifitfails

I tried all kinds of things including a 12ft breaker bar where I was pretty sure something was going to break except the axle nut. A friend had a high end impact wrench and one came right off the other in a minute or so. My cheap HF impact wrench was a waste of space for this.

Good luck.

Bring it to a local shop. They will have a large impact gun that will do it in short order...Just smile and give the guy a few bucks.

Rich

Like a tire shop/wheel shop?

Took me ~30 seconds each with an impact wrench and some PB. I got the strongest wrench I could from Loews, and just did it. I have fond lots of uses for it since then too. Purchase well worth it.

Zach

Yeah , I know about the tensile strength / heat treat of certain critical hardware , mine been sitting in the backyard over ten years, didn't have air hose long enough to reach.Breaker bar ( with cheater ) and rust penetrant wouldn't touch it, sooooo I gets the tourch out , and no I don't plan on reusing them. My methods may not be ideal , but the goal was to remove the stub axles and axles without breaking the cv joints loose.

Jaxdream

I posted something earlier this year from a machine shop blog about good penetrants, where they proved PB was not much better then WD40. (might have been at Jake's forum, I don't recall off hand)

a 50/50 mix of acetone and ATF worked several hundred times better at breaking loose rusty bits.

Zach

I've been dealing with the same issue w/ arms off of the car. one nut came off w/o problems. However on the other side has been a bitch. The cotter pin broke and had to be drilled out. I've been soaking it for a week now and it still wont come off with my Costco impact gun. I am going to borrow a friends gun.
I am not using the trailing arm and I bought a new nut from HPH so I don't need to get it off, but I am determined to get this sucker off as it has become an issue of pride.

Well, I would suggest a general mechanic shop over a retail tire chain.
Easier to walk in and get them to do it with no paperwork or managers to talk to etc...

If you happen to have a truck repair shop near, they will have a huge gun and a huge vice to hold it...everthing they have will be bigger so you stand a better chance of getting it off.

Overall, a normal mechanic shop typically has bertha...a big impact gun that weighs alot and only runs on 3/4 inch sockets...they all have one tool for stubborn bolts...just ask nice.

Rich

Not sure what the size of the nut is, but they make a cheap impact tool for the VW axle nuts that's a thick steel plate with a hex hole in it and a small arm. It has a coupla places on the arm that you whack with a sledge to create a good impact.

Maybe the nuts are the same size. The tools run about $9.00 if I recall.....

Try CIP1 for a listing of hex size.

BFI, PB Blaster, Heat, Attitude...