Well, I've gone and complicated my life further somehow. I had the crossmember bolt (which holds up the rack and pinion on my car) loosened but still in the hole, and was using it to help maneuver the rack back into place. Somehow this has caused it to royally booger up the threads. When I went to tighten the bolt back up, it was hard to turn and eventually ended up crossthreaded. I went ahead and pulled the bolt back out and shot some WD40 in there and got some nice metal flakes back in return.
So question 1: is there a good way of fixing this? Obviously, I don't want to ruin the threads entirely as I don't have the resources to put a new nut into the frame rail. Would a tap work? If so, what thread size/count do i need?
Question 2: would it just be better to crank it on up there and let the bolt cut its own threads? I'm not sure how robust the threads are in this thing so not sure if this would totally ruin it or if it would be okay. Somethings are more or less fine when crossthreaded, other things end up stripped. See above concern - do not have the resources to weld in a new nut, so this one's gotta get fixed.
Thanks for any and all advice. Still not sure how I accomplished this one but it is getting a bit ridiculous by this point. This suspension rebuild should have taken a weekend and instead has stretched to two weeks of mishaps and retardation... kind of a lot of stupid issues, even for me.
So question 1: is there a good way of fixing this? Obviously, I don't want to ruin the threads entirely as I don't have the resources to put a new nut into the frame rail. Would a tap work? If so, what thread size/count do i need?
Question 2: would it just be better to crank it on up there and let the bolt cut its own threads? I'm not sure how robust the threads are in this thing so not sure if this would totally ruin it or if it would be okay. Somethings are more or less fine when crossthreaded, other things end up stripped. See above concern - do not have the resources to weld in a new nut, so this one's gotta get fixed.
Thanks for any and all advice. Still not sure how I accomplished this one but it is getting a bit ridiculous by this point. This suspension rebuild should have taken a weekend and instead has stretched to two weeks of mishaps and retardation... kind of a lot of stupid issues, even for me.