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?
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.
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".
Ok sounds good. So what are your thoughts on using or not using the lock straps for the bolts? I've heard a couple times don't use them, could break tear up things. My thoughts are they have been in there for years and no serious problems have occurred and they were designed and engineered for that application. Figured I would get to the bottom of that here. Lol
The lock straps worked just fine and still do. They were time consuming to properly install, should Never have a a tab bent twice and any tab that is loose should be removed. Bending tabs back and forth will lead to them breaking off. The production line issues caused by the long install time and the danger of knocking a bolt loose while bending a tab, led to "safer" more cost effective methods. Personally I have never heard of a problem with correctly installed locking tabs.
It is important when bending the tabs to not strike the bolt head in a way that will loosen it. One tab must be able to mechanically stop on the surface being bolted. A lot of people just bend up a tab without securing the other side. Something has to stop the washer from rotating. Proper installation is key. As you can see for today's production speed, there just too slow to do right.
Sounds good. Thanks for sharing your knowledge on this topic. That's why I asked here. It gets a little mind boggling when you hear so many opinions, which one is best? My mind less boggled now. Lol
This vehicle will be doing NO racing, street use only. Well maybe off road too but nothing crazy. Just wanna make sure it's back together good, a lot to go through to take back apart and fix cause of taking shortcuts or improper install. The cool thing is my dad is retired Air Force and he knows all about safety wire how to if I need. That was a good article on that topic in motor trend. Thanks for that link.
Well again thanks for your input and I will get busy.
When we tore down the differential for the ’48, we had an “OMG” surprise. One of the ring gear bolts had fractured and was dangling by one of the safety wires. That particular differential had only been in the truck for about three years and had been torn down and inspected after the original had thrown a scrap iron for when a bearing disintegrated.
And we used a much better grade of wire to secure the bolts when we rebuilt it.
The horror stories that have been told from the turbine engine shop, where the government inspectors count the turns in the safety wire to ensure the correct number of turns were made in between fasteners.
There is a guy on YouTube that restores old CAT crawlers. He has fold over locks down to a science.
Those are absolutely thee most serious lock tabs I have seen on a 3/8 bolt! Nothing like a Cat. I remember selling to them. The selection was always easy. They always demanded the most durable products we had. Cost was never the first question, that beating came later. The first question was always strength.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote