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Hello, I am trying to get the spindle housing off my murray deck. I've sprayed it (both sides -top and bottom) with liquid wrench three times over the past three days but they wont budge. do i need a torque wrench? What gives, can I just whack the bottoms off with a hammer? (that's what i feel like doing at this point). :confused2: I'm attaching some photos of the bottom. Thanks for your help.

Clean the threads on the screws with a wire brush, soak with some sort of penetrating oil, and then remove the bolts, they may be seized and just break off due to corrosion in the thread area.

Most of them will break no matter what you try, just get a friend with an impact wrench and break them off, go back on with 5/16 machine screw/bolts.

Those are self tapped at the factory, the only good way to take them off whole is with an impact as well.

Ok Ilengine, I will do that, thanks for your reply. I was ready to go out and buy one of those air torque wrenches. I get frustrated when it comes to using strength to do things.. being a girl has it's disadvantages. I'll spray them some more with liquid wrench and clean them with wire instead of nylon bristle and see what that does. I'll let you know if I can get them off of there. Thanks again!

Fish, if I can't get them off with using the liquid wrench and a good cleaning, is a impact wrench the same as an air torque wrench?

Well a torque wrench is just a basic socket wrench that measures the "torque" or tightness of a fastener when re-assembling.

An air/electric impact wrench uses little pulses of energy, which gradually loosens and hammers the bolt , knocking the rust
corrosion loose, better than anything else. Soaking these bolts in anything is pretty much a waste of time.

Heck, a real good investment for you would be going to Lowes and buying an electric impact wrench, they have some good power....

Thanks for the info Fish - my air compressor is only a 3 gallon one so I'm not sure it will do the job with the impact wrench, I soaked and cleaned the bolts and nothing, not even a budge. I have a feeling I'm going to have to bring it down to the auto shop. I'd like to hit them with my hammer but I know that's a temporary feel good idea and wont solve anything. :wink:

Actually putting a wrench on the bolts and smacking it to the left with a hammer will do the same as an impact wrench, but I would suggest going to Wal Mart and buying their $25 impact wrench if you have an air compressor, you will thank me in the long run.
If is can build a p.s.i. of 90 or better, it will do fine, you just will have to let it build up pressure between bolts, but having the
impact wrench will make your life a lot easier.

If you just trying to remove them to put a new spindle housing on just break the bolts.

Just put a wrench in them and a cheater bar and snap them off.

Carscw said:

If you just trying to remove them to put a new spindle housing on just break the bolts.

Just put a wrench in them and a cheater bar and snap them off.

Click to expand...

True, but using an impact wrench after never having that option, is quite empowering, and will make one feel confident that
he/she can handle anything that comes along. Imagine/think how much easier changing blades will be from now on.. Changing a car tire!!!

Fish said:

True, but using an impact wrench after never having that option, is quite empowering, and will make one feel confident that he/she can handle anything that comes along. Imagine/think how much easier changing blades will be from now on.. Changing a car tire!!!

Click to expand...

I agree. But don't tell anyone I don't want anyone to know I agree with you.

Man I hate changing blades. Should have changed mine days ago

Yah, when I worked in Lawrenceburg, one of my customers was coach "Buddy Ryan", and like most of my older customers, he was tight as hell, he always wanted me to come out to his horse farm to work on his stuff, and he had a little 1 gallon compressor, and it was good enough to do any chore out there that I had to deal with. But I was using good Ingersoll stuff
back then. You just had to wait for the compressor to recover before the next nut.....

Fish,

Yay! It's finally fixed. Got a cheapo air wrench at Harbor Freight, they're on sale for $19.99 and used that. While the air compressor was filling up (it had to refill quite a bit) a smack on the ratchet with the hammer, they eventually loosened. I think all the oil that i put on there helped too. One bolt did break off but those bolts were crap anyway and I used the ones that came with the new part.
I guess I'm cheap too. I'm a widow and raised 4 kids alone for the past 15 years and got ripped off a few times before it sank in that I really needed to learn to do things myself. Every penny counts and fixing things myself is now second nature. I do need advice a lot though, Especially on things I have no clue as too. Last month I had to replace the bladder tank on my well, figured out how by watching YouTube videos. I thought it would be hard but once I had everything I needed (the tank,a few new PVC pipes and fittings) it was really quite easy. I'm just glad the well motor didn't need replacing, it's 120' down.
Also, thanks to Carsw and Ilengine too. Everyone's advice is like gold to me. I will remember it. :thumbsup:
time to get mowing - mow today, pool tomorrow. :wink:

Yeah the youtube tutorials are great, I wished that I had them available 30 years ago. Even if they are not totally right in their method, you can watch it done, and that is priceless. Which is why I always advise anyone wanting to get into the business
of working on this crap, to go to a decent mower shop and offer to work for a month or two at min. wage, and at the end of that period, renegotiate. If you find out that you don't want to try to do that for a living, you came out ahead. If the guy likes your work, and gives you a big raise, take it and work for another year or so and soak in all of the knowledge that you can.
Then decide if you want to open your own shop.

If I had the internet back then, who knows... Watching it done is better than any book.

Re-reading your last post, did you get the wrench that looked like this?

Or does it look like this one?

Hi - the wrench looks like the second one you posted.. the smaller one. It worked alright. I think it will also come in handy to get off rusted bike wheels as well, I have a few bikes that need fixing up and taking the wheels off is priority. I haven't had time to attempt that yet, the lawn mower was top on my list along with a few other things inside the house. :wink:

You should have gotten the first one, the impact wrench. It uses tiny bursts, or impacts to jar the nuts loose, and will bring out
screws that would otherwise break. The second one is just an air wrench, and has its usefulness but an impact is a must.

One is a impact gun the other is a impact wrench.

No the second one is an air wrench, you can buy them with impact action, but they are very pricey.