Boxerworks.com

I was very surprised when my wheel bolts loosened on an '87 R80. I had used lock tight. Since then I always check and recheck bolts like that including the drive shaft. Check em a few times over several hundred miles and forget it.

dougie wrote: By barrow!?
Is that a wheelbarrow without the wheels?
Man you Aussies are tough.

Sorry, I meant burro.

ME 109 wrote:

dougie wrote: An old guy once said to me, "you'll never make money if you have to take your coat off to work"

I heard a similar thing, but it being about your ass being higher than your heart.

I am so tired of this old thread. I would assume that we did as much of this work as anybody anywhere.

We re-used them all of the time, unless they showed damage. Damage means that they fell out and got rubbed, or got lose and the threads worn down. I don't recall a single come-back with a bolt that fell out, or that we even found loose that we had installed.

There was a spate of bolts that came loose and fell out, but that was in 1965.

We never torqued them either. Is isn't hard to torque them accurately, but it just isn't necessary. Tighten them down to as tight as that short wrench will allow with one bare hand.

I know that BMW recommended replacing them. I once asked the Butler and Smith race team if they replaced them after one use. They looked at me like I was crazy.

We didn't clean the threads either. Make sure that they thread in by hand (no damaged threads) and tighten them up.

It is your bike, do as you wish.

Duane Ausherman wrote:I am so tired of this old thread.

I especially went to the trouble of thread jacking this thread Duane just to make it more appealing/at least different.
To no avail.
I give up.

It's not an old thread, Duane, it's an old topic.

In Duane's day the bolts were longer, with a star washer to keep tham from becoming loose.

chasbmw wrote:In Duane's day the bolts were longer, with a star washer to keep tham from becoming loose.

AFAIK, it was a split lock washer. The "theory" was that the washer would fracture and remove the locking mechanism of the washer, thus allowing the bolt to walk out.

Kurt in S.A.

We saw only a ouple of those washers split up and the bolt walk out. Mostly it was a case of not being tightened in the first place at the factory.

Duane Ausherman wrote:I am so tired of this old thread.

Well if you must know, I only brought it up to see if Diane might make an appearance....