ARB brackets ... bolts made of cheese!!

[knicko]

PS - I can’t think of any reason why your handbrake travel is affected by the footbrake. They are independent systems

Since I wrote that about my handbrake, I realised it is not the release of the footbrake per se that causes the extra handbrake travel, it is the car trying to roll forward if stopped on a down slope (maybe same in rolling back on up-slope?). Also, if I test the handbrake by setting it and trying to drive forward, the handbrake also goes loose and enables a few more clicks. Once pulled up further, the handbrake does hold nicely though.

 

[knicko]

Well I'll be jiggered! Just been routing through a tap & die set that I bought years ago and never knew how to use. It's got a thread gauge in there and absolutely right... those ubiquitous 12mm Toyota cheese bolts are M8 with 1.25 pitch.

Every day's a school day... thank you all

 

[NFSR]

Hope you have recovered from jiggering ,tap and die are esential with rusty 100 series every time you manage to get a bolt out complete you should run the correct size tap through the hole to clean up the threads. Then apply coppaslip to new bolt on assembly. The M8 with 12mm head seems to be a Japanese thing,my LD 400 and Nissan Partrol has this sizing on many fixings. Niall

 

[Grimbo]

You will never find an M8 bolt on anything built by the Japs with a 13mm spanner size ...they will all be 12mm , not sure if this is because of superstition ?
Commonly now though you find M12 with 18mm spanner size and M10 with a 16mm head...more to do with cost saving than anything else I reckon ....1mm may not sound like a saving but over millions of bolts it adds up .

 

[wedgetail]

You will never find an M8 bolt on anything built by the Japs with a 13mm spanner size ...they will all be 12mm , not sure if this is because of superstition ?
Commonly now though you find M12 with 18mm spanner size and M10 with a 16mm head...more to do with cost saving than anything else I reckon ....1mm may not sound like a saving but over millions of bolts it adds up .

It’s not superstition or cost saving - it’s just JIS, Japanese Industry Specification. Just like M12 with a 17mm head, M10 with a 14mm head, screws with a head that looks like philips but isn’t (be the close, but for a perfect fit you need JIS screwdrivers). To work on a VW you need every spanner/socket from 7-32mm, every spline drive, torx and Allan bit that can be bought. For any given bolt size that are about 10 options for a head. WTF?Personally I JIS - to work on a Toyota you need 8, 10, 12, 14, 17, 22 and 24. Very occasionally a torx, or bigger socket in some transmission areas. It really sh*ts me off when I’m working on a Landcruiser and someones replaced the nice orderly JIS bolts to something else and I have to squeeze out/climb down/go and find a whole ‘nother set of sockets/spanners just for one mismatched bolt!

Getting back to these bolts - stainless bolts are not a good substitute for anything structural - they rarely have the correct rating. Just use the correct rated bolt with anti-seize, no more dramas. Probably ok for away bar bushes but a bit of a bandaid fix IMO

 

[Tractionman]

Stainless steel bolts always have a their rating stamped on the head, whereas Ive not seen any ratings stamped on Toyota bolts. Maybe its their thing so you have to replace like for like Toyota bolts, not knowing what their rating is and pay extortionate prices. ?
The last oem I bought, a single exhaust manifold stud for an lj78 - no nut, was around £5 !!
My personal opinion on J.I.S nuts, bolts, screws etc is that they are inferior, as very often stated 'made of cheese' with tapered bolt heads that the correct size socket/spanner will only grip on the bottom half of the head, encouraging slip off or rounding.

 

[knicko]

My personal opinion on J.I.S nuts, bolts, screws etc is that they are inferior, as very often stated 'made of cheese' with tapered bolt heads that the correct size socket/spanner will only grip on the bottom half of the head, encouraging slip off or rounding.

Yep, the 24mm diff drain and refill nuts are the worst... tapered head with hardly enough sticking out to get a socket on properly. I've got a dedicated socket for those which I ground down to remove the bevelled edge on the socket face.

I grew up working on crappy British Leyland cars and don't remember shearing many bolts on those (apart from exhaust manifold which is kind of expected). Having said that, BL cars were coated in oil most of their lives

 

[knicko]

To close this one out... I have made use of a couple of dry sunny (although cold) days and cracked on with Jobs #2 and #3 as per my opening post.

To my delight, the front bolts all came out without any dramas and therefore front ARB bushes and drop links all changed, with M8 bolts replaced with stainless steel ones.

Had another go at the rear ARB bushes (I had already sheared one of the four bracket bolts last time and replaced with a nut and bolt). With a bit of patience, I managed to get two of the other three out cleanly and sheared off the third. However, I was able to successfully drill out the sheared bolt and re-tap all four of the holes to enable new stainless steel bolts to be fitted.

I can confirm that the common Toyota 12mm bolts are M8 with a 1.25 thread. The replacement non-Toyota stainless ones are 13mm head now of course!

Thanks again to all those who proffered guidance about this and certainly good advice to clean out threads with tap/die whenever possible.

Happy days

 

[sim303]

@knicko - just to say, I keep a good stock of s/s bolts and routinely use them when reassembling anything on my truck. So many of the original bolts have given me grief that whatever the potential issues are with using stainless fixings on non-stainless metal are, it can't be worse than what I am dealing with with so many of my original bolts. So far, in 6 years, I haven't noticed any problem with any of my stainless replacements. None have broken, none have siezed. They are a pleasure to come back to if and when I need to. I use a little copper-slip if appropriate to reduce galling, and that's it. The only time I don't use them is for fixings which are clearly critical and under high stress. So... under-tray bolts - yes, brake calliper bolts - no..

 

[knicko]

Thanks mate... good to know

 

[karl2000]

'm a bit uneducated on bolt threads and how sizing works,

This month's CM has 4 pages on bolts!

 

[karl2000]

...

 

[Tractionman]

Haha, you might have guessed with me Karl, won't open !

 

[karl2000]

Haha, you might have guessed with me Karl, won't open !

Bloody computers.... see if it opens for anyone else or if the file is broken...

 

[Towpack]

Won'y open for me either. I'm also getting the "page not found" errors again when viewing posts and/or logging in. Not too bad at the moment but last night was a nightmare.



Edit...........just done it again!!!!!

 

[Towpack]

I have no issue with using stainless bolts in most areas except in high stress/torque applications and areas which are subject to repeated hot/cold heat cycles.

 

[Tractionman]

Same old with the errors, forbidden, page not found malarkey T.P. Know what you mean.
Some things never change eh ?

 

[Tractionman]

I've got it now !