[Boondocker75]

I was doing some work on the drivers rear subframe and went to drop the subframe out of the car. There are 4 bolts that hold the main subframe in, two on each side of the car. The one of the front drivers side is spinning in the captive nut in the frame of the car. Has anyone seen a procedure for replacing this and where i can get the captive nut. I know i will likely have to hole saw into the frame to do this as i have done this on older cars but never had to do this on a 2011. Trying to find the spot that wont structurally hurt the car.

 

[Mike_H]

Did you ever figure out a good fix for this issue? Just ran into the same problem myself.

 

[bradley.p0700]

I think I'm also running into essentially this same issue on the front subframe. I'm trying to drop the front subframe some by unbolting a few bolts.. I think they're called "support bolts" or something, but there are square-shape nuts inside of the frame rail, difficult to get to (a little rectangle slot is all the access there is), that are just spinning in their cages. Thinking about tack welding the nut in place, or cutting the bolt off, or maybe cutting a bigger access hole to get a wrench inside of it. Any luck on your end?

 

[Mike_H]

I was fortunately able to get a flat head screwdriver in through a gap in the frame, and wedge it into that “box” holding the nut just enough to get it to grab the edge of the nut and keep it from spinning, and I carefully removed the bolt from there. I left the screwdriver in place so I didn’t loose the grip it had on the nut, and was able to reinstall the bolt after I was done. Lesson learned...don’t use the impact driver on those, just loosen with a breaker bar and ratchet.

 

[bradley.p0700]

I was fortunately able to get a flat head screwdriver in through a gap in the frame, and wedge it into that “box” holding the nut just enough to get it to grab the edge of the nut and keep it from spinning, and I carefully removed the bolt from there. I left the screwdriver in place so I didn’t loose the grip it had on the nut, and was able to reinstall the bolt after I was done. Lesson learned...don’t use the impact driver on those, just loosen with a breaker bar and ratchet.

Yep, that's a lesson learned for me too. I broke the bolts loose with a breaker bar, tried to zip one off with an impact, that was a no-no. Wedging a screwdriver in there sounds like a great idea.

 

[Mike_H]

Good luck! I did a lot of praying haha!

 

[repairman54]

Those ''captive'' nuts are pain. Lots of them used on body parts and accessory parts also.
Lots of repeated presoaking with PB or Kroil beforehand is a must.