So without thinking about the hydrolic pressure and needing to take off the trunk hydrolic in order to remove a plastic panel so i can wire my car; I removed the Torx-45 holding the bolt in on my trunk hydrolic. Of course the pressure made it shoot out and strip the bolt and possibly the inside tread when it got to the end, now my issue is trying to get the bolt back in its not working so well, where do I go from here? A friend said I need to drill out the tread and buy a similar bolt with a bigger treat to go through and not be so stupid next time, does that sound about right?... and if so where do i order this bolt from?

thanks in advance.

 

Don't drill it out!
If you have access to a tap and die set or a thread chaser set you can cleanup both the bolt and the hole real easy. If it's just the bolt use a really small file to cleanup the threads. Finding another bolt with the same thread and running it in the hole with some grease on it may help straighten those threads out too. It's probably not as bad as you think ... don't make it worse.

 

Are you talking about the pneumatic dampeners that hold your hatch up? Any hardware store will cary the new bolt you'll use - take the old one in and compare/ask. I'd go to Lowes. I'd say you're probably fine drilling it out. If you have a dremel, a light abrasive tip might be better. You could get the tip rigged up to a screwdriver, too. maybe 2 bucks for it.

The "side effect," though. As far as I can tell, the rear defroster circuit runs through that dampener on both sides. At least it does on my 89 RS. If the new bolt accidentally grounds that, you're going to kill your fuse and loose the defrosters.

You could just run a wire between either connection where the dampeners disconnect from the cord. It'll make it possible for the defrosters to run while the hatch is open (safety concern?) but if you use a strong enough wire, it should work out. Though, I'm not really an expert with auto-electronics.

(This is all pending you have rear defrosters, of course.)

But that's what I'd do.

 

Take the strut off the hatch also. then bolt the torx side on first. that should make it alot easier and take the pressure off of it.. Make sure you have something strong holding that hatch up.