I spent the afternoon trying to finish installing the new seatbelt in my Jeep. The two bolts that hold the belt ends to the car are placed very awkwardly, so that getting my ratchet to them was incredibly awkward. Unfortunately, both of the bolts at the floor are extremely rusty. The bolts are #45 internal Torx heads (a star shape). When I applied force to the ratchet, there was a slight crunching noise, as all of the points disintegrated into rusty powder. With nothing to grip, the Torx bit on my ratchet just spins around uselessly.
I have yet to come across a workable idea for how to remove the rusty bolts, but I'm working on it.
you're not a real amateur mechanic until you've stripped or rounded off bolt heads. unfortunately, removing stripped bolts is more of an art than a science.
my strategies usually involve "modifying" the bolt head with a dremel tool to accomodate some alternative grip points for some other tool to break the bolt free. use liberal amounts of penetrating oil.
use liberal amounts of penetrating oil. you do own a breaker bar, right?
if all else fails, you can always drill it out, which is always an adventure.
be sure and coat the replacement bolts with antisieze!
Well, the extra fun part is that the placement of the bolts leaves only about an inch or two of clearance for each bolt. Most tools can't reach them. One of them can't even be seen unless you actually have your head resting on the floor of the vehicle. It's a peach. I am totally overcome by joy, truly.
sometimes some unholy combination of extensions and u-joints can overcome that. otherwise, have fun removing the seats/anything else that dares stand in your way.
don'tcha love it when the 30 minute projects turn into 3 hour ones?