I’m also waiting on new shocks, so I thought I would go ahead and take the old ones off in advance. Three of my four upper bolts came out OK. The fourth one had the threads flattened on the last 1/4” or so of the bolt. I thought I’d run a 5/16 x 18 tap in there to clean things up. It started binding up in one place on each rotation. I ran it on in, but when it came out, there was a thread chipped on the tap. I’m thinking that’s not rust. I ran a new bolt in the hole, and it came out with the last 1/4” of the treads flattened. I ran another tap in the hole and felt the same bind on each rotation. There’s something hard in that hole and it’s not rust. My guess is that when Chrysler made my Jeep in 1995, the person or machine that tack welded the nuts on the back side of the cross member splattered some of the wire / rod used in the welding process, and it’s harder than anything else involved. No way to know for sure, but I got to thinking that if that is what happened, it may be one of the problems the plagues many XJ’s, besides just rust....