What to use for drilling through radius army??!?!?!

[uh60james]

What to use for drilling through radius arm??!?!?!

Well, I decided I wanted to do like some others here on the forum and repair my shock mounts rather than replace the whole radius arm. As of now I have spent about as much money on tools to do this job as I would have if I bought 2 new radius arms from fordparts. Thats ok I guess, I guess I will have use for the new dremel I had to buy since the cordless didn't have the power to cut through the worlds hardest metal. So I got the new Dremel and cut through the pax side mounting bolt fairly easily. I grab my drill and the $15 drill bit I bought as well. It does virtually nothing to the metal . Its a Dewalt 12V Cordless, is the drill just to underpowered? Do I need a magical drill bit? Help please as I now have to drive with one front shock, not cool.

 

[SkanlaxJMO]

borrow a corded drill....they just have more balls.....i have an 18v Black and decker and it doesnt go through metal but today when i was drilling out the bolt holes on my table vise with a 1/2 bit it went through like butter with an old black and decker 3/8 varible speed corded drill.

 

[RangerX]

Sometimes it helps to drill a smaller, pilot hole in metal, rather than starting off with the 1/2" bit, or what ever size you're using.

Also, I second the corded drill comment.

 

[uh60james]

Everyone I know has cordless so I guess I will try the pilot hole for now.

 

[uh60james]

Finally got both sides done and what a hassle. I drilled the pilot holes and my $15 drill bit still didn't do crap. I ran over to walmart and picked up a $5 black and decker drill bit and put it in and it cut through like butter (not that easy but compared to the other bit). Anyone setting out to do this themselves I would reccomend the following tools. If using a Dremel to cut the old bolt off use the fiberglass reinforced cutoff wheel, the others will work but this was the fastest. A corded drill or a good quality cordless, my 12v Dewalt worked fine with the right bit. Two 1/2" Black and Decker Steel Drill Bits, just to be safe this is some hard metal they will dull quick. And I used a metric 8.5 bit to do the pilot hole. Thanks for the help.

 

[alexefron]

I lift the stud alone (it was quite hard, and my sledge wouldnt even bend/mark it). I drilled a hole behind it, working my way up from 1/8th inch with a hammer drill.

 

[uh60james]

Yeah that stud was made out of some extremely hard metal and I thought about going at it with the drill from behind it but my drill was too large to do that without taking the radius arm. It took about 5 minutes with the Dremel with the reinforced cut-off wheel, the other side I didn't have any reinforced wheels for, I went through 5 wheels and about 15 minutes. If you can get a drill to the back side I would definitely reccomend that, but mine was too large to do that without taking the radius arm off and that wasn't an option.