We got it! A friday evening of bolt-breaking

I'm just going to come out and say it. We got that damn bolt free!

Ok, now the backstory.

We ordered a new impact gun to step up our game, an Aircat 1150. It felt noticably stronger than my Craftsman, which was by no means bottom of the line. This one is spec'd at around 1200 ft-lb of loosening torque.

Sadly, that wasn't enough to break it free.

We rattled away on it for a while, heating up the impact socket. That was a new one for me. 

Next air tool to line. We spent some more time with the air hammer/chisel. Nope. More torch. More PB blaster. Nope.

Grabbed the cutoff tool, and cut through the far end of the bolt, next to the hub. Took some time, thick bolt & even my pretty significant compressor was having trouble keeping up.

Eventually got through it, air chiseled the chunk off of the hub, gave it a few heavy whacks with a hammer, then more with the impact gun, and it broke free!

The bolt had mushroomed at the far end from the hammer, so I spent a little while longer with the cutoff tool cleaning up the bolt to round, then we were able to extract it!

Yeah, you could say I was happy.

Pile of tools involved in getting it free!

We finally had all the necessary parts off and out of the rear end. Plenty of cleanup left, but it felt like great progress!

In other news, I took a few minutes at work to print out a keychain for the future car.

Came out pretty well, I think. If I can get my own printer up and running, I'll offer these to other builders. Could make them for whatever text was desired too.