There is very little room to get anything in there, but I did have an "emergency lug nut removal" socket that I was able to get locked on the nut and used a combination of the impact and the breaker bar to pretty much crank until it broke the socket. Overall a very small victory because now there is JUST enough room between the nut and the bracket to get some PB blaster in there and keep hammering away... I've been working on this intermittently all day, don't have a grinder or anything but that will be my next power tool purchase... haven't started building up my tool arsenal until the past year or two.

 

As was mentioned, a decent 4" grinder with either a cut-off wheel or a grinding wheel would likely make short work out of that job. I enhanced my tool collection over the years by purchasing lots of good, used tools via our local Trading Post paper, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace and eBay. Nothing worse than having to tackle a job without the proper tools, as it makes the job take so much longer. I've also found that YouTube is a helpful resource for good ideas/solutions for things I've done in the past, but tend to forget over time.

 

Cut-off wheel would be best. Just be careful you don't cut into the bracket itself.

 

I recently changed out my front shocks as well. One thing I noticed was that the lock nuts on the back side (towards rear of truck) were actually tack welded to the frame there. Perhaps this is why you simply can't hammer it out? Mine were also rusted/locked together very tight but a short handled sledge managed to push it out from the shock bushing. If you get the nut off somehow you can always through bolt it with another locknut, though I'm sure you've already considered this.

 

If they were actually tack welded to the housing that was done after the factory.

Dodge used the nuts with a "flag" on them to keep them from spinning. Sheetmetal that worked great when new and crumples when old and rusty

 

I figured as much, considering it also has an aftermarket lift kit and has been hacked in many other ways lol. You never know what you may come across.