Hello All,
To avoid the embarrasment of needing one more nut to finish a job, I wound
up getting a little cabinet and filling it with variuos amounts of nuts/
and washers. I happen to have used all AN hardware, and I got a nice
assortment for about $100. Once the drawers seem near depletion, I get
another 10 or 20 of whatever and they show up a doy or two later (I've
used Pegasus just because they are racers, but McMaster Carr or other
suppliers can be used.)
What to get?
I like the list that the Buckeye site lists, but if you decide you want AN
stuff, get at a min:
50 AN "dash-5" nylon insert elastic stop nuts (I can't recall AN365?) full
height! You use a lot of these on TR6's. If you want, get a smaller
quatity of "half-height" nuts. These come in handy from time to time.
Do the same thing for dash-4 (1/4-28) and dash-6 (3/8-24) with slightly
less quantity.
Get a similar number of regular nuts (grade 5 or better). I like having a
large amount of regular nuts available because sometimes you have to
assemble/dissasemble things a few times trying to get things "right" and
nylon insert elastic stop nuts have a limited number of assembly "cycles"
before you have to dmp them...
Get a box of 5/16 lock washers (grade 5 or better). I don't always use
lock washers any more, I try to replace with elastic stop nuts, but for
high temp stuff (like the engine!), your choices narrow (you can get high
temp "stop nuts" - but they are expensive.
Then get 100 each of the AN proper washers (thick and thin) for each "dash
size" you use... you'll use dash-4, dash-5 and dash-6 in large quantities.
Now, having spare bolts is another matter altogether. You should make up a
shopping list for these and get a few of the more popular sizes. I like AN
hardware, but have used grade 5 and grade 8 as needed. But when I buy this
stuff, I usually get 10%-20% more fasteners than I need and when I'm done
with the job, the leftovers go into the cabinet or "jar" as spares. To be
honest, I probably carry 5 or 6 pounds of nuts/bolts/washers as spares in
the race car support vehicle, but that represents the extreme.
A final note on hardware, jam nuts are pretty good to use in certain
applications (like high vibration/high temp situations), _BUT_ if you
intend to take these apart frequently, you should seriously consider using
a different type of fastener, because the jam nuts cut into the parent
metal of the bolt and therefore reduce the life expectancy of the bolt to
a few assembly/dissassembly cycles. I use jam nuts for exhausts, I don't
use them for anything on the suspension, as the suspension _needs_ to come
apart from time-to-time.
Oh well, that's enough rambling for now.
rml
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