Screw It

[Shinysideup]

Replaced OEM plated pan-head torx screws with stainless steel socket head cap screws, mostly on the battery cases, and rear fender. Will slowly go after almost all of them.

Why?
The mixture of screw types bothers me. (I know... I know..)
I like stainless: its looks, its durability.
I've always liked the looks of Allen head screws.
It's more studly looking?
It's the UUF: Ultimate Useless Farkle
I get to feel what it must be like to work on the Ashland assembly line.
It indulges my OCD. Definitely exercises my OCD. Definitely my OCD.
OK, OK: there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to spend any time at all doing this.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/10852133@N02/8430443224/#in/set-72157632567075439

Tip to the thousands wanting to follow my path into madness:
Open up a large paperclip.
Poke it in the small hole in the battery mounting bracket for the screws ABOVE the hole.
Do this before removing old screw and while starting new screw.
Also, poke the paper clip up the mounting groove in the black battery case for those screws that are BELOW their small hole.
Do this before removing old screw and while starting new screw.

Why, you might well ask? Because some of the small bits into which the screws thread will dislodge and slide down their groove in the battery case (Newton's forces at work) and be damned near irretrievable from the dark nether regions of your Empulse. DAMHIK.

And oh yes, I torqued every last screw to 41 inch lbs, just like the manual specified.

[Gavin]

You are my new hero....and you are clearly insane

Gavin

do you have a before and after?

[protomech]

Allen head screws are super sexy. I love this.

The fasteners for the bodywork on the Zero are really poorly done IMO. Half of them are plastic fasteners which start to fail after a few cycles. Half of them are black phillips-head screws which are starting to rust (!)..

The raised screw head works well on the battery mounts, not sure how it'd do on the bodywork for the Zero. Might get a small number and try them.

[BrammoBrian]

Would you be interested in a Titanium bolt kit?  We've developed a kit for the TTX.  It would be slightly less useless as you'd be saving weight versus the standard hardware. If so, tell Don at Scuderia...



The battery bracket to frame bolts are titanium as is the shock bolt.  They are tapered head sockets from Pro-Bolt.  We also upgrade the brake caliper bolts, which saves the most weight.

BTW... we try to avoid using stainless as it galls in aluminum... so you may want to add some anti-galling/anti-seize to those bolts.

[Brammofan]

It galled me that I had no idea what you meant by "gall."  So I googled a bit.

Why does stainless steel gall?
I recently ran into a situation where some 1/2" 316SS bolts were frozen in a 316SS liquid head on an HPLC system. The bolts would come about half way out just fine and then lock up for some reason. The system is brand new. I feel pretty sure that the threads were cut accurately. There was no lubrication present. A colleague told me that this happens quite often with SS. We could not get all the bolts out and scrapped the part. What in the world causes this?

(A) Think of a snowball going downhill. It picks up more snow as it rolls along and
gets bigger.

If you were to cut apart that scrapped assembly you'd see tiny little stainless steel
snowballs. They'll be jamming the threads because they grew as the fastener
began to turn. They grew in size until all the thread clearance was gone.

Stainless is especially prone to this as it does not really form any surface oxide
so the very clean surfaces rubbing in contact will weld to each other when
there's relative motion. Also note that when you reverse direction on the
bolt, the snowball does NOT get smaller. It keeps on getting bigger.

This is a problem that's well-understood by high vacuum folks. The classic is
the new guy who assembles a system with conflat flanges and goes not put
molycoat on the bolts. Then he bakes the system at 150C which *really* cleans
the fasteners but good.

Never get any of those flanges apart ever again wihtout sawing the bolts off.

[protomech]

The classic is the new guy who assembles a system with conflat flanges and [does] not put molycoat on the bolts. Then he bakes the system at 150C which *really* cleans the fasteners but good.

What a noob!

[Brammofan]

I wonder if anyone will get this reference:

"I said 'socket,' not 'sprocket!'"

[Gavin]

i want titanium bolts

and how about a kit for those yellow/gold battery covers?

and a TTX replica tank would be killer...even with the Brammo.com stickers and other (parker, sevcon, 3D, Brembo, Icon, etc)

Gavin

[FreepZ]

Sounds like you want the "Hero" package (which is what Icon calls the version of their Overlord jacket with all the logos).



That's sort of what the passenger is wearing in this video



(Hey, they changed the music since the last time I saw this video... Still awesome! )

[Shinysideup]

Thanks for the great technical info, Brian. And thank you for making me take everyone of those suckers out and put them back in again with lubricant! Yeah, thanks a lot, Brian!

Seriously, that's good advice. I found this information where they recommend a teflon anti galling compound:

http://www.fastenal.com/content/feds/pdf/Article%20-%20Galling.pdf

I've got on hand the standard zinc anti-seize and some fancy copper anti-seize I picked up in Germany to use on mufflers, since it has higher heat resistance. What product would you recommend? Or does pretty much anything work? I imagine there's not a lot of pressure on these threads at the specified torque value, but dissimilar metals do weird things electrically also, so lube sounds right.

And do you have any idea on what the revised torque value should be for these M5 fasteners, now that I've lubricated them?

I see I've opened a can of worms and now must re-engineer my beautiful Empulse!

And how dare you tempt me with titanium!!

[Shinysideup]

And Gavin, that first frame of the video above is the "before" picture, since I didn't take one.

[flar]

If I order a set of the titanium bolts and install them, can I have a special TiTanium eXperimental sticker to place over next to my R?  You can shorten it to TTX, I'm sure they'll get what it means...

[flar]

The battery bracket to frame bolts are titanium as is the shock bolt.  They are tapered head sockets from Pro-Bolt.  We also upgrade the brake caliper bolts, which saves the most weight.

Just curious - All in all, how much weight is saved?

(Though, in my case, a rider replacement would save probably 100x the weight of the bolts.)

[oml]

Just curious - All in all, how much weight is saved?

(Though, in my case, a rider replacement would save probably 100x the weight of the bolts.) :(

And thats kinda the essence of every discussion about weight-reducing of bicycles/motorcycles I've ever had.

Most of the times taking a piss before the ride would be an equal effective but much cheaper method :D

[implovator]

Most of the times taking a piss before the ride would be an equal effective but much cheaper method

That's a sound strategy. In fact, it's employed by birds as well.

From http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/faq/unusual_questions/document_view

I have been asked to find out if Canada Geese, um, poop while they fly. I'm sure you have more important issues, but this is very important to the seven-year-old who goes to the driving range with me.

Birds are certainly capable of pooping while flying. They often poop just before taking off, perhaps to lighten their load. Although this might not reassure your seven-year-old, you might also mention that in some cultures people believe that is very good luck to be hit by bird poop.