Weak bolts or I'm the hulk.

[blueST]

Just wanted to check I'm right in suspecting I've been sold some cheapo sub standard nuts and bolts as part of a ball joint kit. Been putting a new top ball joint on the front of an Isuzu Trooper. The joint is secured to the wishbone with three new M10 bolts and nyloc nuts. On doing them up tight, by hand, with a normal ratchet I've stripped at least one and maybe all three. Should it be even possible with hand power alone.

The bolt heads are marked 8.8 but the nuts are where my suspicion lies.

[ch427]

Sounds sub standard to me, i dont think i could strip an m10 fixing with a standard ratchet and i do have a habit of over tightening things!

[kambites]

No, you shouldn't be able to strip a good M10 nut with a normal length ratchet. At least not without hitting it repeatedly with a big hammer. Even with a breaker bar it would require a fair amount of force.

How deep is the threaded bit of the nut? Cheap nylocs sometimes have a lot of nylon and not very much steel thread. There should be at least four full turns, if it's designed to be tight more like 5 or 6.

Edited by kambites on Saturday 25th July 21:25

[blueST]

kambites said:

No, you shouldn't be able to strip a good M10 nut with a normal length ratchet. At least not without hitting it repeatedly with a big hammer. Even with a breaker bar it would require a fair amount of force.

How deep is the threaded bit of the nut? Cheap nylocs sometimes have a lot of nylon and not very much steel thread. There should be at least four full turns, if it's designed to be tight more like 5 or 6.

Edited by kambites on Saturday 25th July 21:25

I'll post a photo tomorrow. I had to cut the bolt head off as the nut wouldn't back out. I the used a hacksaw to then cut the nut off. You can see the thread is totally mashed.

[paintman]

Doesn't sound good, but what's the torque setting for these bolts?

ETA. Quick google might have answered my own question:
http://www.itocuk.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=168...
"lower balljoint Nut 147NM-108lbft
the four bolts 103NM-76lbft
top ball joint 98NM-72lbft
the three bolts 57NM-42lbft"

If you'd used a torque wrench & they failed below the setting then you'd have a chance arguing with the supplier. As it is, might be worth raising it with them but in the circumstances given I can see them refusing to replace/refund.

Edited by paintman on Sunday 26th July 03:39

[Polome]

blueST said:

Just wanted to check I'm right in suspecting I've been sold some cheapo sub standard nuts and bolts as part of a ball joint kit. Been putting a new top ball joint on the front of an Isuzu Trooper. The joint is secured to the wishbone with three new M10 bolts and nyloc nuts. On doing them up tight, by hand, with a normal ratchet I've stripped at least one and maybe all three. Should it be even possible with hand power alone.

The bolt heads are marked 8.8 but the nuts are where my suspicion lies.

A couple of years ago I was tightening a 1/2 inch copper pipe compression fitting ( in home cold water pipe) . When reaching a decent tightening torque the nut would jump back a thread making fitting loose again . Inspection showed excessive clearance between thread of nut and thread of fitting. I checked a few others in the bag and all were the same. Took them back to B&Q but all others on the shelf were similar. Now use only fittings from plumbers merchant. ( and check the thread quality before use) Your problem could be similar...ie excess thread clearance not giving enough angular contact of thread so easy to strip or it could be good contact but poor quality material...a few things to consider.

[craigdub]

You could easily pull significantly more than 57nm with a 1/2" drive socket. Were you using a torque wrench?

As you said you pulled them up, by hand, i'd guess you have stripped the threads rather than poor quality.

[blueST]

paintman said:

Doesn't sound good, but what's the torque setting for these bolts?

ETA. Quick google might have answered my own question:
http://www.itocuk.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=168...
"lower balljoint Nut 147NM-108lbft
the four bolts 103NM-76lbft
top ball joint 98NM-72lbft
the three bolts 57NM-42lbft"

If you'd used a torque wrench & they failed below the setting then you'd have a chance arguing with the supplier. As it is, might be worth raising it with them but in the circumstances given I can see them refusing to replace/refund.

Edited by paintman on Sunday 26th July 03:39

For the cost of come new bolts and nuts, it's not worth arguing anyway. I'll just get some new ones from the engineering supplies place down the road.

I didn't use a torque wrench (I know, I know....), I shall borrow one.

Slightly unrelated, the original ball joints had a castle nut and split pin, the replacements have a big nyloc and no split pin. Would the different type of nut have an effect on the torque value?

[craigdub]

blueST said:

Slightly unrelated, the original ball joints had a castle nut and split pin, the replacements have a big nyloc and no split pin. Would the different type of nut have an effect on the torque value?

No, same torque values, the bolts are the same size/same grade just a newer type of locking mechanism.

[imagineifyeswill]

The quality of aftermarket parts is getting worse by the day, probably manufactured in China.

[blueST]

imagineifyeswill said:

The quality of aftermarket parts is getting worse by the day, probably manufactured in China.

I know, and I usually try to stick to the known brands, but choice is limited where Isuzu Troopers are concerned.

[one eyed mick]

If you guys will buy cheap crap from the likes of b+q , unknown suppliers on the bay you will get the cheap s---e , you would not buy beef from a fishmonger would you so why buy fasteners from a diy outlet,and buy the correct stuff as its bit important on saftey related items i.e. brakes ,steering etc rant over sorry

[blueST]

one eyed mick said:

If you guys will buy cheap crap from the likes of b+q , unknown suppliers on the bay you will get the cheap s---e , you would not buy beef from a fishmonger would you so why buy fasteners from a diy outlet,and buy the correct stuff as its bit important on saftey related items i.e. brakes ,steering etc rant over sorry

Erm, it was from a biggish motor factors, not some unknown EBay seller.

[kambites]

I've never had a problem with either pattern car parts or B&Q's compression fittings and I've used both a fair bit.

[PhillipM]

You can easily strip an M10 8.8 bolt with a half inch ratchet. In fact it's my prefered method for removing seized droplinks.

[Mr2Mike]

kambites said:

I've never had a problem with either pattern car parts or B&Q's compression fittings and I've used both a fair bit.

I'd say you've been pretty lucky then. There are some absolutely crap pattern parts around these days, and ECP seems to specialise in many of them, though at least they usually give you the option of an OEM quality part.

I'm also very careful to closely inspect anything sold by the DIY sheds as well, despite selling many parts at top end prices they tend to be low-mid quality at best.

[kambites]

Mr2Mike said:

I'd say you've been pretty lucky then.

You may be right. With the Elise it's very easy to find good pattern parts because the enthusiast community is so strong - anything substandard gets picked up very quickly and it's probably not worth a Chinese company making cheap knockoffs of Elise parts anyway; the ones I've used on the wife's cars have always seemed fine although I wouldn't use anything I didn't trust for safety critical bits such as brakes and suspension and there's one or two other components I wouldn't buy from an unknown source because it's easy to produce low quality versions which will work for a bit then fail (such as Lambda sensors without the heating element).


As for mainstream DIY shop plumbing stuff, I've not had any significant issues at all (I generally buy plumbing odds and ends from Screwfix but I think they're identical to B&Q stuff). I got a few dodgy bits when I was putting the air lines in my garage but that was really cheap E-bay bits that had obviously been poorly cast and probably weren't really designed to take 10 bar of pressure anyway.

ETA: Actually thinking about it, I have had one or two solder-ring fittings from screwfix with no solder in the ring, which isn't dreadfully helpful. Especially when you're soldering several components close to together in one go and it turns out one of them has no solder. Still I have come to the conclusion after doing a lot of DIY (I'm just finishing building a two story extension on our house) that for a lot of things it's actually better to buy cheap and accept a few failures. Even with tools I think very carefully about how much I'm actually going to use it over its lifetime before deciding whether to buy something cheap and crappy or expensive and good. Obviously I've made a few bad decisions and had to replace things (never buy cheap router bits to use on expensive materials ), but less than you'd think.

Edited by kambites on Tuesday 28th July 08:42