Stripped top wheel hub assembly Bolt now at an impasse?

If I understand right, you're replacing the bearing assembly. If so, the knuckle doesn't get removed. There's three bolts on the backside of the knuckle to remove, then pull or bang the bearing off. Remove the axle nut too. With the new bearing installed, be sure to not place any vehicle weight on it until the axle nut is tightened to specs. Some people set the tire on the ground to keep the axle from spinning while they tighten that nut. By that time the damage has been done. The new bearing will be noisy and make a buzzing noise. It's easy to just stick a screwdriver into one of the cooling slots in the rotor to hold it from spinning, then tighten that nut. The torque spec for that axle nut is 155 foot-pounds unless specified differently in the instructions that come with the new bearing.

For the two large strut bolts, those have just two flats because they can't rotate. There's splines under the head. To remove them, loosen the nut most of the way, then pound on that to drive the bolt out. Once you get past the splines, you can remove the nut all the way, then pound directly on the bolt without damaging the threads. GM designed it this way thinking their cars would never need to be aligned. (Fat chance). When "camber" needs to be readjusted, those splined bolts get replaced with Chrysler-style cam bolts with offset heads. A standard bolt goes in the top hole. That offset bolt goes in the bottom hole and creates the adjustment as it is rotated.

Sorry for the delay. I understand the problem. Hadn't considered the rounded head. If that's the stud on the lower ball joint you're fighting with, banging on the knuckle usually shocks the stud loose. You can also try a "pickle fork". That has a pair of teeth on the end of a shaft that you can pound in to wedge the parts apart. The problem with those is they usually damage the rubber boot on the ball joint.

Another thing to consider is welding a nut to the bolt head. You have it apart enough for that. There's a few tricks, though, to make that work. First, you need a way to hold the nut in place. If you have a helper, he can hold the nut in place with a pointed-tip locking pliers. The next secret is you have to heat the bolt head first with an acetylene torch. Propane torch will not get anywhere near hot enough. Once the bolt head is hot, hold the nut on top of it, then go through its hole and hit the welding wire on the bolt head. Try to avoid welding to the nut at first. Once the weld has penetrated into the bolt head, allow it to build up until it runs into the nut. If the welding wire hits the nut too soon, you won't get a good bond to the bolt.

Fill in the hole. The nut will get red-hot right away and melt away if the bolt head isn't heated first. By preheating the bolt head, the weld will penetrate it before the nut starts to melt away. The next secret is to stop welding before the outer hex of the nut melts away.

Once the nut is welded to the bolt, I like to sprinkle a little water on it to shock it and shrink it. A few taps with a hammer can also help to free the bolt. Now try to remove the bolt, but if it still feels really tight, let it cool for a few minutes, then try again.

Don't panic if the nut twists off the bolt. Grab another one and try again. I've had to do this with as many as six nuts before the bolt came out. By preheating the bolt head to red-hot, it helps it to melt into the weld before you completely fill the hole in the nut. Use a wrench or hand ratchet to work the bolt loose. Air-powered impact tools have a good chance of twisting the nut off the bolt.

On some applications, thread-locker is used on those bolts. Heating the bolt softens that material.

Another trick, if you can get in there, is to use an air-powered cutoff tool to grind two new flats onto the bolt head. Keep the head as wide as possible so you can use a larger open-end wrench. Smaller wrenches will have a tendency to slip off.

My last suggestion is to grind the head completely off. That will allow you to remove the bearing with the bolt still in it. If you're replacing the bearing, just find a new bolt in a salvage yard. If you're putting this bearing back in later, there will be about 3/4" of bolt exposed that you can grab with a small pipe wrench, a vise-grip pliers, or even a vise. You can also weld on a piece of metal to use as a wrench.

Let me know if any of those ideas work.

Yup. That bolt will want to fight sliding out, so you may want to run the other two in part way to have all three to pound on. That way the bearing will come out straight. If it feels like you're going to damage the two good bolts because too much force is needed, you may have better luck going right behind the bearing's mounting surface on the knuckle and driving in a sharp flat chisel. Do that in a number of spots around the bearing to start it coming out. Some come out rather easily. Some will fight you.

I'm really happy to hear you solved this and how you did it. I'm going to include that as a suggestion for the next person who runs into this problem.

Please tell your friends about us and come back when you have your next insurmountable problem.

Disconnecting the battery won't erase codes in Air Bag and Anti-lock Brake Computers. Data is stored and can be read by certain people to prove fault or innocence after a crash. Disconnecting the battery does erase codes in most other computers.

Anti-lock brakes is an option. When you have that option, traction control is an option to that, then, the next option is stability control. Since you have that, it is involved with the ABS Computer. Most likely fault codes will have to be erased with a scanner. Some of the more advanced simple code readers can access Air Bag and ABS Computers now, so try that first. If you can erase codes, but only some of them set again, they're indicating a problem still exists. If it looks like ALL of the codes are still there, you may need to find a shop with a scanner to erase them.

Let me know if erasing the codes is the solution or if we need to go further.