Holy Bolt Batman!

Here's a good site also
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/steel-bolts-sae-grades-d_1426.html

Bolts were too soft. I have stainless bolts in mine. But I've never heard of pinch bolts breaking like that. You must be hell on wheels LOL.

Man if I am hell on wheels now, I must have been a reject from hell years ago!


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Threads look darker near the fracture on both in pic. Any chance of salt or acid from a cleanser getting in and pitting the bolt, weakening it over time? If it always has tension on it as a pinch bolt would I could see it. Happens up here in the "land of rust" quite a bit with cars.

Maybe but both?! I thinks it's a stretch (no pun)


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Nice word play!. I don't know, I'm not a metallurgist, but both would be under tension, both would be the same age, and while both were discovered at the same time one may have broken before and not been noted until the other let go. Just thinkin and typin.. Either way, I guess you need new ones! My bar clamp bolts were bent (previous owner damage?) and I never noticed until I swapped out my bars. All new and safe now, but scared the crap out of me when I found what was connecting my hands to my forks while driving!

Most likely is that they were over torqued at one time. In order to torque them the headlight nacelle and front fork cover need to be removed. Who is going to do that? I got the bike from a friend with 9,000 miles so either he leaned on them ( he's not capable of mechanical work of any kind) or the factory or dealer did it. I replaced them with grade 7 bolts which are definitely stronger than the stock crappy ones. Looks real fine, last a long time, don't touch it, leave it alone!


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Stainless is more brittle and doesn't handle shock loads as well.

http://www.boltdepot.com/fastener-information/Materials-and-Grades/Bolt-Grade-Chart.aspx

OK, I'll change them over - although I've had no problem with the ones I have now.

Your scooter is probably quite a bit lighter than mine plus , there seems to be quite a few softtails around the country in the mid 80's that were breaking them. You should be fine.


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I've heard of this once before. The question is,"how many bad wrecks did this cause?" You couldn't tell because all that would be left is a scattered pile of sheet. Kind of like the broken fairing brackets that cause the notorious/but rare high speed wobbles on batwing models.

If I weren't raised as a mechanics son I may not have looked into what seemed to be a very sublime low speed wobble. My deciding to perform the fall away adjustment is what led me to discover the broken bolts. Further the right fork tube had unscrewed four to five revolutions. You're right, left undiscovered could have led to a wreck.


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Good thing you found it.

Club meeting, Biker Blessing then a ride today. Only in the 50's but a nice day. I was explaining to a buddy about my broken fork cinch bolts and we checked his 2004 Heritage. Guess what! He had a broken bolt! We then went around checking about 20 other softails and found one more on a 2002 Fatboy. WTH Harley Davidson!!!!!!

Not liking the sounds of that at all. I wonder how many of this batch of bolts are out there ready to snap. Good for you for getting the word out on the other bikes out there.

Dang, that's about one in every ten bikes.