Isn’t it amazing how doing nothing for years can sometimes be good, and sometimes be bad? Trees, for example – do nothing with ’em for a few million years and you get petrol 
Steel nuts and bolts, however, you can’t even leave for twenty seven years … 
This weekend has been spent stripping down the front suspension eager to put some shiny new bits on, but in total I’ve managed to undo something less than two dozen bolts 
I at least managed to save myself a trip to the gym to use the weights machines, as instead I undid the front ARB chassis mounts
They were in good and solid, but in the end two bolts came out and two sheared off. As I don’t have a decent drill (that I’d be comfortable using under the car), I also removed the ARB mounting brackets which I’ll clean up and use the pillar drill at college to get the stuck bolts out. EDIT: Just realised you can’t actually see the sheared bolts in this pic, but they’re the rearmost ones on each side…
On the offside, the splitpin in the track control arm nut is rusted in good and proper and is at just the right angle to make access to punch it out virtually impossible. I couldn’t get enough purchase on the nut to just snap the splitpin either, but I’ll try again tomorrow. Other than that, the old 20mm ARB and nearside TCA are off the car and into the scrap pile 
Notice in the above pic, though, that the nearside track rod nut is just a normal nut, rather than the castle type I would have expected … and indeed found on the other side 
Whether it’s meant to be or not, though, it’s annoyingly locked itself solid onto the thread coming out of the TRE – which now just turns freely 
I can’t get at the other end of the thread as it’s inside the TRE, so how do I undo the nut? 
You’ll have guessed from all this talk of track rod ends that the steering assembly’s coming off as well. The leaking gaiters that I cleaned up to get through the MOT are both weeping again – dunno how as I’m guessing there’s not much lubricant left in the rack. As the rack mounts needed to be undone to fit the new bushes, logic tells me it’ll be easier to swap out for a recon rack and have one less thing to worry about in the long run.
I’ve got all the steering rack mount bolts on the crossmember undone, but I’m stuck with what to do with that knackered TRE thread – oh, and I had to stop as I couldn’t feel my toes anymore 
EDIT 11/11/07 :
Dave : TREs sometimes (and more usually nowadays) come with a nyloc instead of a castle nut.
To get the spinning one undone put a jack underneath it and press it up into its taper. Works everytime for me.
If you try to shear the pin on the other one, make sure you use a hex socket, not a multipoint one. Otherwise you will round the nut off and be even more stuck. If you don’t have a hex socket that size, you will find one in Halfords amongst the impact sockets.
me : Cheers Dave, I’ll give it a go with the TRE tomorrow The one on the TCA might be easier to get at too – now that the ARB is out of the way 
dangerousdave : As dave says stu, get a jack under it with the weight of the front on it 
failing that kill it with an angle grinder 