Disk brake bolts

I'm going to powder coat my wheels, so I have to remove the disks.
The workshop manual states that bolts must be replaced.
Is this essential?
Has anyone bothered to do this?
They must be high tensile bolts, so it shouldn't be a problem in my mind.
Feed back will be appreciated.

 

I remember BMW had a recall on all those rotor bolts, they were torx heads which made a low paying job more of a PITA. Got impatient and used an electric impact and snapped one during re-install; I still have that sucker on my shelf of shame, had to drill it and use an extractor.

I have re-used rotor bolts with no issues, if it bothers you, by all means buy new. If they were rod bolts, I would use new ones as aboove poster was tawlking aboot stretch and such. They are a one time deal...I am sure the super bike teams replace every nut and bolt...

 

I think your splitting hairs on this.

Many manufacturers recommend replacing fasteners that have a locking compound (Loctite) applied to the fastener. The fastener can be damaged due to the excessive break-away torque needed to break the locking agent when the bolt is removed. Also when the fastener is reused the old dried up Loctite may have an adverse effect on final torque. Honda recommends replacing the caliper mounting bolts. How many of us replaced those after unbolting the calipers to remove the wheels? Honda also recommends replacing the bolt for the handlebar weights. Overkill?

I think it boils down to what your comfortable with. Kennybobby makes an excellent point about cost. Life vs 12 bolts? I had my wheels powder coated 10,000 miles ago. Reused the old hardware & didn't think twice about it.

If your going to reuse the old bolts make sure you remove the factory Loctite. A few passes with a wire brush works for this. Apply some new Loctite & TORQUE to spec w/ a quality torque wrench.

 

I just did this last year after powder coating my wheels. It was like an oil thread there were so many facts and personal experiences for both points of view.

In my case, this was the first time the bolts were taken off. I put mine back on and haven't thought about it since. When you take yours off, really look at the and maybe run them across a cleaning wheel. If they look good as new, stick with them. If not, buy new ones. Just my $0.02.

 

A lot of pros and cons on Google for re-use of bolts in different situations, engines, structural etc. Biggest unknown is have they been removed before and re-torqued properly? Have they been stretched too far?

 

I've never done this, so I'm just curious: how much can these bolts cost? I guess my opinion is if there's one bad story/fact about reusing these bolts, to me, its not even a question. They get replaced.

Not directed to you cuelho, but if anyone is looking to make a cosmetic upgrade to your ride, and can't afford to make the necessary safety mechanical upgrades that go along with it, then you shouldn't be spending money on the bling to begin with.

 

New bolts would be nice and shiny too. I did not put new on only because I decided not to wait the couple days for new to come in. Don't recall the price but I don't think it was much at all.

 

12 of them are need @ $3.00 apeice. It wasn't a price issue, merely didn't want to wait for mine.

If I were buying new wave rotors, then I would of course buy them all at the same time.

 

Ive had two front wheels powder coated, and both wheels still have the original bolts. Like Arnzinator said, clean off the bolts and reapply locktitie and you should be fine. That being said, I also bought some bolts recently for a wheel that did not have rotors so I needed them to install some rotors I picked up. The bolts were $2.10 each at Partzilla.com

 

I'm not being cheap, here Honda wants $9.00 each for them.
It's a rip off.
Why spend $108 if not needed.

 

$108.00, Wow! that's more than one of the rotors I bought!

 

Now let's think this through. I've NEVER bought a new disc bolt other than to change them to Ti.
I have removed & refitted many I discs over the years & have never had a bolt fail.

Now let's look at the science here. A hard steel bolt with a shoulder for the disc to locate on is used by Honda, this bolt has thread lock applied to stop it coming undone accidentally through vibration etc. It is screwed into a soft alloy wheel boss at a low torque. If we apply to logic that it stretches, then the wheel would need replaced with the discs as the soft alloy threads would now be about to strip their teeth !

In the real world, use a torque wrench & re-use. I've seen to many people think that tight is NOT a measurable thing so F'ing tight should be applied & watched them shear bolt heads !
USE a torque wrench & do NOT over tighten. Cylinder head bolts are one of the few that should be replaced if recommended by manufacturer. Otherwise almost all steel bolts screwed in to alloy can be re-used.

 

Makes sense to me.

 

^ Wut Mohawk sed. Also think aboot this; if you have a two piece rotor (floating disk) The blade (rotor) is the thing that is getting the heat cycles and temperature, not the carrier (thing thats bolted to your wheel.)

Note on using an electric wire wheel brush on fasteners, I just don't. They have a coating, whether its zinc cadium, etc etc etc. If you strip this stuff off, you could be setting yourself up for an ugly looking fastener thats rusted, pitted, shitted or worse. I would use a tap/die to clean up some threads and maybe just use WD-40 and a rag to clean the cosmetic parts. I have seen stuff that has been wire brushed and this holds up...AnywhO-Cheers, nothing beats a nice braking set up btw, I use afater market rotors and steel lines on all my shite...:thumbsup:

 

If your looking for some eye candy try here: www.pro-bolt.com

 

All you need is for the rotor bolts not to back out and fall upon the road, street, alley, boulevard, motorway, avenue, lane or interstate. The needed strength for the bolts in this application is all in shear mode, not in tension (like a rod bolt), and repeated removals shouldn't change that strength.:lemo:

Since factory applies locking agent to bolts, bolt heads tend to distort and ream out a bit with the unlocking force needed (especially using junk tools) so that proper torque during replacement might further destroy the allen head, making any following removal very hard. Good reason for renewing bolts if head is distorted.

 

At 14 ftlb, that explanation is just a tad overboard.....it did sound all Popular Mechanics and shit, though.

 

This is a little off topic, but from my experience make sure they don't powder coat the area where the discs go. They are a tight fit to begin with and that makes it worse. Also, if there is coating under the bolts, they will keep coming loose. Same goes for the bearing surfaces, it's a bitch to clean it out.

 

Yup. On advise from zoom-zoom, I bought some cheap bolts to put into the bolt holes, masked off the bearing area well, and before I replaced the rotors, did scrape the powder coating off the surface carefully. Now I gotta clean off those cheap bolts because I am too tight to throw them in the garbage. A Scottish thing you know!

 

When I was a second year apprentice, my boss got delivery of too many liquid transfer pumps in an order by mistake. He gave me one to take home as they were too good to throw out and he got them for free.
That was in 1980. I kept this pump in its original box, moving numerous times interstate, and sometimes in long time storage as I travelled and moved around.
Fast forward to 2004, and my wife and I finally bought our first house. Before moving in, we decided to have a garage sale and get rid of stuff we'd been carrying for years.
So the pump went, for $10.
Two years later, after a long drought, we bought a large water tank; and you guessed it, we needed a water transfer pump, at a cost of $250.
The moral of the story is: don't keep anything. If you do, you will never need it, if you don't, you'll need it just after you've thrown it out.
The world is made of a precise demand/supply fabric in a perfect state of equilibrium, and you just can't f**ck with it.
The only way this might have worked, is if I made a conscious decision at the time to keep the pump, as I flushed $250 down the toilet. But this is only a theory, as I'm too tight to test it.