I got a rear sway bar, and its almost all the way installed, but my fat paws wont fit around the gas tank, and D aint available till thursday.

I looked around the shop for different wrenches and what not, and from lookin at it and tryin it, i dont see how ima get a wrench on it. Also, when the bolt is stuffed all the way in the hole, it hits what looks to me like a hard plastic gas line. with that there, theres no way to get a nut on the bolt. I tried moving it, but it dont wanna move,. So i figured, Id barrow one of the neighbors kids (5yr old) to stick his hand up there, and start the nut. But this leaves the main problem, how do u tighten down the nut? I thought about threading the hole the bolt goes into, but then that wont work either cause there is no head. I also thought about buying a new bolt with a head on it, so i can put it thru, but I dunno how well this would work.

I 'believe' i have everything needed to thread the hole itself though..

The thing is, id hate to take it all aprt for the 15th time, and wait till thursday....

tho, the other option is jacking my bed up a couple inches, if i could get the driverside bed up about an inch, this wouldnt really be a problem. However, How hard is it to jack the bed up? its 6 bolts right?

 

6 bolts for the bed and the gas filler.

you really only need to loosen the opposite side dont take it out and the drivers side take all 3 out and jack the bed up at an angle.

as for that line, that far back its the line going to the canister.

what i did to hold a nut up there is i took the size wrench i needed and bent it at a 90* angle so that i could get the wrench in there.

 

bend a craftsman then take it back to sears and get it replaced i did that and i bent it with a torch.

 

Its pretty easy to take the bed off, or to just lift it in order to get to what you need.

 

ya my dumb *** tried to bend it with out heat, and snapped it.. Got a gusher from that screw up... D is gonna stop by with his magic tool in the am, on his way to work. I got the nut on, and its somewhat tight, sorta, but needs to be tightened down, and I can no longer get to it argh!

 

From the angle... have you ever tried adopting a Crowsfoot wrench from craftsmen to get soem funky extensions in to get the bolt tightened? I had to purchase a set of them when I was removing the EGR tube from my headers.. it was locked in place and a standard wrench wouldnt fit properly.. so I tagged a crowsfoot onto it, hooked that up to my wrench.. and it did the trick.

 

I like WowMike's suggestion, Crowsfoot can save the day!

 

One second.. going to get a quick linky to the picture.. I know out of all my buddies, only one or two of them actually know what I am talking about hehe.. not your 'every day' type of tool.. but for 30 bucks I bought a whole pack of them at Sears..

 

I had no problems.. just a simple socket wrench.. though the extended cab gas tank might be shaped different..

as always:

 

ya i got those tools, tried that already... i tried every tool dad has. What would work killer, is an offset wrench, with a ratcheting end on it (if it will fit thru the lil baby hole they expect u to work thru) prob is, their only available online! argh! can i drive this thing with that nut loose? cause at the moment, i now have NO vehicals that are road worthy.... thanks to some a-hole on the phone the e350 is down for the count.

 

Been fighting this for 4 months on my '08'. What's involved in loosening the fuel tank a little and trying to shove it over a bit to get this nutstarted and tightend? That stupid vent line is right in the way too, can Ford make this any more difficult?

 

Dam, I did it without taking off the bed. I remember it being really hard to do, but I got it somehow

 

Hawker, I took 3 bed bolts out, and loosened the other 3 ALOT then picked up the bed and shoved a 2x6 between the frame and the bed.

Then, I went to sears, and bought a 18mm wrench with an 'extreme' offset. this allowed me to get at it from the top and gave me just enuff room.

As far as that frickin gas line? its held on to the frame with push pins, i cut the ends of the puch pins off, and then tied up the gas line with a super long zip tie, and tied it up to the bed, theres a hole in the bed support right there. That allowed me to get the nut on the bolt. but u need an extreme offset 18mm wrench, preferrably one with a ratcheting end on it... omg if sears had one with a ratcheting end, it would have made this job 1000000000x easier.

 

lol ghetto body lift with 2x6!

and then you drove to sears

 

OK, thanks FMD. I just finished getting it in and closed up. I went in underneth. Loosened the two gas tank strap bolts (but not remove) and the two bolts that are easy to get to on the outboard side of the aft strap. Wedged a 1-1/2" board between the frame and the gas tank an got a little bit of room. Was able to finally get a stubby wrench in the channel and tightened it down. The pax side is no trouble. Mine is a Roush and the zig zag bar from the frame down to the bar has a stud (?) in the rubber grommet that is supposed to be thru bolted to the frame. No way on this, so I swapped ends and reversed to direction of the stud end to go thru the bar eyelet. Now everything lines up resonably well. Put it all back together and nothing seems to be interfering with anything else. Will test tomorrow.

 

FX2.3 my MOM drove me to sears.... there, feel better?