Everything You Always Wanted About Lower Ball Joint Bolts

LOL... SO did I. LOL My bad

May of 2023

 

Agreed. I would think the pressed roll pin type sleeve would be stronger. But, in my case, they obviously were not. LOL

Somehow it's not surprising. I don't always have the best luck on these things.

 

For the record. Now that I have taken the side apart that didn't break. The LBJ bolts were the two different length, like what is provided by @TOTAL CHAOS. Therefore, my memory did not serve me. The bolts had to have been the ones provided by TC, because I have never purchased different length LBJ bolts.

 

Did you reach out to TC to share with them? They might be interested in seeing a failure out in the wild.

 

@El Taco Diablo any progress?

 

I have made some progress. But work has been extremely busy for me lately. I'll try and update what I've done this weekend.

 

So... off topic. Here's how busy work has been.

 

Ok, so here's what I'm working on.

Difference between M10 and M12 is actually not that much. But M12 is rated 30% stronger than M10.



Working with a new (to me) set of spindles. So, I started by doing gussets.



Then I started building up the forks of the spindles. Because I'm removing material for the larger bolts, I wanted to build them up so they didn't lose strength at the area near the (widened) bolt hole.

 

Test fit. The LBJ still nests properly in the spindle.

 

Then I built up the LBJs... again, because I'll be opening those holes from 10mm to 12mm.

 

Drilling the LBJs to 12mm

Not sure how clear you can make out the difference between 10mm and 12mm here. The hole is about halfway drilled.

 

Difference between the spindle forks before (left) and after I built them up (right).

Not sure how clear it is... but it's quite a bit actually.

 

Most of the bolt heads fit fine.



I'll need to do a little grinding to make a couple of them fit though.

 

A little bit of persuasion and all the bolt heads fit.

 

The holes that allow the locator sleave are about 12.85 mm. I need them to be 12 mm.



So I welded them in. I'll drill them back out to 10.5 so I can tap 12 mm x 1.5 threads. Then I will counter sink 12 mm about 4 mm deep so the shoulder of the bolt will be the locator.



The shoulder of the bolt will take the place of the locator sleave.

 

And that's where I stop today... because I chipped my only 10.5 mm bit.

I ordered 4 more that should be here tomorrow.

 

Never thought about using studs. Interested to see the strength vs bolts. Probably not much difference.

https://youtu.be/81mR_Xw5Hz0?si=ha7GjbBBOdioGwTO

 

I’d maybe preemptively build out a jig to make some fabbed spindles in the even the weakest link gets moved to the upright portion and they, despite having gussets, bend. This guy had a cool approach to making a hybrid fabbed and factory spindle for how he makes his CV’s work here.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eh22BXtbISI

From experience I know how much time and effort it takes for all the cutting welding and grinding to make all those little parts and idk how motivated you’d be if it ended up bending and needing to be replaced imo.