Replacing Ring Gear Bolts & Why

[Skboyd]

A question that may have been asked several times. I've heard several opinions on this matter so I thought I would ask here. Remove bolts from ring gear. Been told to replace bolts with new,understand that. But I've heard use hardened bolts with red lock tite no need for bolt clips. Also drill holes in bolt head and tie together with safety wire. So what's gonna be my best solution to put back together safely?

[bmorgil]

In the early days, and when you really want to be sure.... "Correctly Installed Safety Wire" is aircraft quality. It simply doesn't get any better than that.

https://www.motortrend.com/how-to/1003cct-how-to-safety-wire/

I have and do use Red Loctite, properly applied to clean dry threads. I have not had any issues in Street or Racing applications. I use Safety Wire when the racing gets serious however.

Do you replace the bolts:
This is a great question and came up every time a group of boys got together to learn about axle rebuilding. Correctly installed, the original ring gear bolts (High Grade 8 SAE) are torqued to a specification that puts them in stretch. They can be stretched a given number of times (not a lot of times) before they are no good. When we got together to write tech manuals, the engineers were concerned with the condition reused bolts would be in. This concern didn't start with my Tech group, it started long before. So this was a practice that has carried on from long ago. Because you who are writing the manual do not know how many times the bolts have been stretched, if they have been overstretched or if an impact gun was used to remove them, heat or anything that would ruin the bolts tensile strength, you simply wrote "Always Replace the Bolts".