Need Help: Totally Rounded Off Lower Ball Joint Retaining Bolt (NOT Castle Nut)

I was getting ready to replace my leaky lower ball joints with Moog units and as I was loosening up the 4 bolts on the bottom of the lower ball joint, I totally dicked up one of them. Im not talking about the castle nut, but the 14mm retaining bolts like this:




I went to Sears and got myself a set of these:



But these things were of no use as they dont attach to a socket driver like the Irwin ones and only rounded off the bolt even more so. It is totally messed up at the moment.

I tried to clamp some vise grips around the bolt and manually hammer it out but my curved jaw vise grips dont get the right bite and my straight jaw ones happen to be too small.

So what are my options here? The truck is at the parking structure at work and while I do have a wide variety of tools in the back, I dont have access to heat, air, or hydraulic lift. I have all the hand tools, jackstands, and jack that you would find in a normal home garage in the back of the truck.

I figure my best approaches to this are to either:

-Get a pair of vise grips with longer straighter jaw
-Try the Irwin bolt extractors that attach to a 3/8 dr. socket
-Drill through the head of the bolt and

Any other suggestions?

 

Drench in liquid wrench, clamp it HARD with vice grips, apply steady pressure until it turns. That should work.

 

Oh, and make sure you are turning it the right way.

 

Lol. Yeah, will make sure direction of turn is correct.

EDIT: By the way, I saw the thread om OEM ball joints only vs. aftermarket and am consdering returning the Moogs to get OEM.

 

By the way,

Just ordered L & R lower ball joints from Camleback Toyota. The Moog ones I had are (or will be shortly) on their way back to Rock Auto.

Now if anyone can give some more effective suggestion son getting this damn bolt off, I might be able to drive my truck one of these days.

 

Lack of air and certain tools does pose a problem. I would initially suggest cutting off the head of that bolt, then when the ball join is separated you will have a shank of bolt to get a better grip with ViceGrips. The other option would be if you could borrow a welder and weld another bolt onto the head of that one and use IT to back it off.

 

Its soaking in liquid wrench right now. Either tonight or tomorrow, Im going to attack it with the Irwin bolt removers. If the bolt removers dont work, Im going to try to drill it out and see where that leaves me.

worst comes to worst, Im going to have to buy a coordless angle grinder.

 

I GOT IT!, I GOT IT!, I GOT IT!!!



So the Irwin 5 piece bolt extractors worked like an absolute charm:



Much better than the Craftsman offering I was trying last night. I soaked the damn bolt in Liquid Wrench this afternoon and got after it in the evening. Put the 14 mm bolt extractor on my Snap-On 1/2in dr to 3/8 converter and put that on my 1/2 in cordless impact. The impac zipped the damn bolt off with ease!

Anyway, now I got to wait till my OEM balljoints get in as I sent my Moogs back this afternoon. Hopefully the truck will be up next week sometime.