Is there any trick to getting the bolts that hold the torque converter to the flywheel off? I tried soaking the bolts in WD-40, heating with a torch for a couple minutes, and using an impact wrench with a u-joint.. The impact wrench got one off, didn't budge the other two (and eventually broke the u-joint )

The only thing I can think of doing is pulling off the oil filter so I have more room to work and sitting with a torch until the bolt is red hot.. Unless there's some other way to do it that I just don't know about

 

I would try removing oil filter, or using a breaker bar. get some penitrating oil....wd40 oesn't always get in there good.

 

Just ran and got a new u-joint and some liquid wrench. Hopefully that'll work a little better..

 

your not spose to heat up the bolt. heat causes things to expand and if you heat it up until its red hot and twist on it your probably just going to break the bolt head off in your socket id get some aerokroil or pb blaster and spray it a few times and let it soak in then use a breaker bar on it

 

I just removed them on my 89 L03 after a lot of years, and mine were ridiculously tight too! What I figured out is if you have your starter out of the way and you rotate each bolt around to that position, an impact wrench works wonderful! You can fit an impact wrench up in there where the starter motor is. I had to use my big 1/2" impact, but it broke them loose like it was nothing. Using breaker bars and all that other crap, all I was managing to do was having to fight the motor turning as I tried to loosen them. Using a torch might not be a good thing for your converter either.

 

I don't know what was up with the two that were stuck. The first one I used the impact wrench on came off real easy, the other two it just sat and banged away and they didn't budge.

Heat ended up working for me, I sat with a torch on the two that were stuck for about 5 minutes each and then used the impact wrench and they came off like nothing. I really wasn't too worried about the torque converter or the flexplate, neither is getting reused..

 

geeze i am jealous of you guys, my tq convertor bolts just fell out at a stop light, it ran me a bill of 98$ for towing They must not have been tight enuff lol

 

That's cool, sounds like it worked out good. Yeah, if you're trashing the converter/flexplate then who cares right? Hey Big J, make sure to use some med. strength Loctite (blue #242) on both the flexplate and torque converter bolts, and torque them to spec and you shouldn't have any problems with them coming loose. The part that really blew me away when I was taking mine apart was that the flexplate bolts were so tight I ended up rounding off the head on one of them and splitting the 6 point impact socket I was using! I had to drill into the bolt, then use a hammer and chisel to knock the head off so I could get the flexplate off. I bought nice ARP 12 point bolts to replace them with, so I shouldn't run into that problem again hopefully! The old 2 pc. rear main motors have bolts with a nice, big 3/4" head, and I've never had any problems with those, but the 1 pc. rms motors have those puny, 9/16" headed bolts, so it's not hard at all to round one off. The bolts are so close to the center hub of the crank that you can't use the older bolts with the bigger head.