Message text written by "rudyeb"
>As I am just embarking on restoring my '59 TR3A, I was wondering if it
made
since to use stainless steel fasteners in lieu of carbon steel. Is this a
bad
idea in so much as any electrolytic actions and/or tensile strength?
<
Stainless fasteners make perfect sense in low stress applications such as
bolting on fenders and lights but I would advise against using SS bolts on
critical applications such as suspension and engine applications. Any
place you see a grade 8 bolt, replace it with a grade 8. Stainless has
less tensile strength.
Also, although stainless will not rust, it is prone to gauling. Thus, any
application that requires fasteners to be torqued to a spec you run the
risk of gauling the fasteners which can be a worse problem than rust. Use
of antisieze will help protect against that but antisieze will also protect
against frozen carbon steel fasteners. Hence I recommend sticking with
standard fasteners where strength is critical and use antisieze and fresh
lockwashers.
Dave Massey
57 TR3
71 TR6
80 TR8
|