How to Loosen Rusty Nuts & Bolts

Video transcription

Hi, I'm James with JNC Home Repair, today I'm going to show you how to loosen a rusty bolt or rusty nut. First thing you want to do if you've got, maybe you're working on a car or you're doing something around the house and you run into a bolt that you can't get off or a nut you can't get off, one of the easiest ways that you can do, to try to loosen it before you even attempt to try to remove it, is you want to spray some penetrating liquid on it like some liquid wrench, some kind of penetrating oil and let that sit on there for about thirty minutes or so and it'll actually penetrate in between the threads and it'll actually help loosen the nut later. Another one you can do is you can use a wire brush. Sometimes there's a lot of build up around the bolt and around the nut and you can use a wire brush and you can just clean it and try to get some of that loose stuff off of there and that'll help break it free. There's another way, possibly. A lot of times if, normally you go counterclockwise to loosen something, if you actually put your socket or you put your wrench on the end of it and you actually try to tighten it before you loosen it, sometimes that'll break it loose and then you'll be able to back it off. A lot of times people are sitting there trying to crank it off and it won't come off and sometimes if you try to tighten is just a little bit, try to give it a little bit of movement, and then you can back off of it and it should break right loose.