bolts

i LUBRICATE EVERY BOLT WITH BLUE LOCKTITE.

[/quote] Thereby proving my point. The APE ones are stronger, therefore they can take more load, which is their purpose. They are designed to separate at a higher cylinder pressure made by higher power machines. Thats why I have them in my bike.

BTW, my posts aren't opinions.[/quote]

I'm sure you meant that they are designed not to seperate at the higher pressures. How do they do this? By being higher tensile strength in a nutshell. They can provide more clamping force by not being prone to stretch as much. les is right, they all stretch they just don't all stretch to failure.

Depends on how you look at it. When I design a bolted connection, I have a separation force in mind that I want to have as my guideline. Its this "seperation force" that engineers use to determine how much to torque a bolt. As les said, every bolt stretches. What you mean is that they aren't as prone to plastic deformation.

Did I ever say that the tensile strength of a bolt wasn't a good measure of it's strength? On the contrary, it's pretty much the only thing other than geometry that you consider when using it in a design. What I said is that using the lower tensile strength of the frame as a reason for using a lower strength bolt is poor reasoning. Sorry if I was unclear.

As an example here, wireman is proposing that the frame is much crappier then these bolts. Sure, a bolt made from the material of the frame wouldn't be as good. But on the other hand, would you want your frame made from 14mm diameter bar stock, even at twice the tensile strength?

As long as the bolts have as high or higher tensile strength than the original frame bolts, I'd be fine with them. I gathered from wireman's premise that he thinks he can get away with a lower grade bolt than the OEM one. Sorry if I'm mistaken about that.

Interesting conversation. Reinforcing torque values if nothing else.

I've actually seen circumstances where a grade 8 fails and a 5 lives. Not typical but in a rock crawler a coworker has, he kept braking 8's on the lower control links, went to 5's and it still lives. I come to believe the added elasticity of the 5 helped it survive but don't know for fact, only that it worked. I will tell you I'm going to use stainless hardware for attachment of noncritical areas, purely cosmetic, and I'm using ape studs where needed, lubed the way ape suggest. I do know that be it motor oil, locktite, moly lube, or what ever you choose, torque specs are different for each, this is fact. I believe there is a lot of good info in this but don't over think it, the way I see it is there is a lot of company's that have already done the homework for me.

nope,what im saying is the origional bolts are not grade 5 to begin with.
so even the lowest grade stainless bolt is as strong if not stronger,i plan on using the grade 5 stainless bolts anyway since theyre much stronger than origionals and they give more than a brittle grade 8 bolt.
im just trying to show all sides of the story as far as bolt material rather than just saying something is better without saying why,that way everybody can make up their own minds.

[quote="les holt" I will tell you I'm going to use stainless hardware for attachment of noncritical areas, purely cosmetic,

X2 I used stainless on my engine covers, front fender, tail section, battery box, and fender liner just for the corrosion resistance, every other bolt on my bike is polished factory hardware or chromed.

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