Cleaning and Leg Leveler Woes

I want to get rid of as much of the rust as possible on the interior metal components of the pad. I've tried using a combination of CLR and steel wool and I think it's had a pretty decent affect. This is what it looked after a few minutes of scrubbing:

Before:

After:

It's not like-new but it's a lot better so I'll probably be doing this for all of the rusted internals. All I do is splash it with some CLR, wait a few minutes, and scrub it under cold water with a steel wool pad.

I've also cleaned the L-bracket compartments of the left pad. For comparison, here is a shot of all four - three of which I've cleaned with one that I hadn't started yet:

These are pretty easy to clean. I just remove the screws and wipe the parts with paper towel and some all-purpose cleaner.

So far, the process of cleaning this thing out has been pretty positive with only a few small set-backs. Unfortunately, I've hit a road block. Many of the leg levelers and wheels on the pads are rusted, bent and in pretty bad shape. I'm going to be ordering replacements from ChannelBeat, but to replace them I first have to remove them. On the left pad, two of the leg levelers came off without any trouble at all. The other two were rusted tight and wouldn't budge.

I used a lof of WD-40 and some vice-grips but all I was doing was stripping the bolts. I tried finding other solutions for similar problems online and saw that there are some pin-ball machines with similar feet that people had trouble removing. I saw a recommendation for Liquid Wrench that worked for at least one guy, so I figured I'd try it. This stuff is similar to WD-40 but it also claims to cut through rust while being specifically made for seizures like I'm experiencing with these levelers.

I sprayed some on both sides of the screws holding the feet in place and let it soak for a few minutes. Afterwards I attached a small pipe to the end of my vice grips for extra leverage. After a lot of effort, I managed to get one of the legs off. I had to use all of me eight and spin the screw about three full turns before it really started to come loose.

The other one, sadly, still won't move at all. My last attempt snapped the vice grips and the bolt is getting majorly stripped. This is the leg leveler in question (taken before I started using the Liquid Wrench):

I'm kind of stuck on what to do here. I've read about bolt extractors (turbo sockets?) but in order for that to work I think I'll have to break the rubber foot and it's metal enclosure off the screw completely. Even after that, I'm not sure the socket will be able to reach the bolt. The leg is also in really deep, so if I decide to leave it in place it will actually be above the wheel making it pretty useless.

While I look for solutions I'm going to be continuing the cleaning and restoration of other pats of the machine. Maybe I need a blow torch...