Fortunately, my bolts were only a little bit loose, not enough to flop around,
but only enough
to let the flanges slip against each other when under load. I'm sure that the
nylocs prevented them
from getting any looser than that. I don't think that Nylocs can be expected
to resist
an unscrewing tendency strong enough to overcome the original tightening
torque, only to
keep the nut from completely falling off.
Those bolts on the axle flanges lead a hard life, because they are constantly
getting
high and erratic shear and tensile loads. If they are not tight enough, it is
easy for
the flanges to start creeping against each other and wearing themselves and the
bolts.
BTW, it would be a really bad idea to replace these bolts with generic
fully-threaded bolts.
The joint relies on the bolts serving as dowels to keep the flanges in
alignment.
Doug Braun
'72 Spit
At 09:56 AM 10/24/2003 +0800, you wrote:
>Please correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I believe these are "nylock" nuts
>and my understanding is that nylocks should not be relied on after one
>tightening. I would think if any have worked themselves loose, they should be
>replaced with new ones.
>
>I remember when one of mine came loose. It knocked the head off one of the
>allen bolts that hold the stub axle flange into the differential case. And
>then of course that area started leaking. And then of course I let the lube
>level get too low. And then of course I had to replace the diff with a used
>one. Doh!
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