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I recently replaced the front upper control arms on my 2005 Jeep Liberty, and the driver side rear nut is notorious for looking impossible to reach, even though it isnt. You’re supposed to go in with a ratchet and extension run under the power steering pump, so the ratchet handle ends up in a relatively small gap between the radiator and the pump.
My problem was that doing it that way meant I just couldn’t swing the ratchet far enough to move the nut in anything more than the tiniest increments. It was going to take forever. So I took at look at the front of the Jeep and realised that if I just moved the power steering cooler out of the way, I could add extra extensions to bring the ratchet out in front of the radiator grille, with all the space in the world.
So that’s what I did, and this is what the Frankenextension ultimately looked like… 3/8 drive at right, building to 1/2 drive at the left.
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LOL … I don’t know whether to congratulate or feel bad for you, maybe both … At least you made it work 🙂
There’s an old British saying:
“Needs must when the devil drives.”
You’ve helped me understand the meaning of it. Thanks.
Was moving the P/S cooler and going to all that trouble really a time saver? I am always wary of ‘time savings’ like that one.
I will often switch to a smaller ratchet for hard to get stuff once it is broken loose to get more room to swing it. Also an excellent example of why it pays to buy good ratchets with lots of engagement points.
[quote=”notoriousDUG” post=139596]Was moving the P/S cooler and going to all that trouble really a time saver? [/quote]
It took all of 30 seconds to move the cooler. I didn’t have to disconnect the fluid lines, just remove its two mounting bolts and it was free, with enough slack in the lines to move it far enough over to allow the extensions through.
You’re right that a ratchet with more engagement points would have helped, but I didn’t have one so I had to improvise if I didn’t want to be there cranking away at the nut a tiny bit at a time (I was getting one click’s worth of swing in the space available). And I was already using a 3/8 ratchet, because anything bigger wouldn’t have fitted (it’s actually specified in the FSM to use a 3/8 drive). Trying to break the torque on a factory-tight suspension bolt that hasn’t been touched in 10 years using a normal-length 3/8 ratchet with extensions, one-handed, isn’t fun.
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