LUVTruck.com

I was hitting up everything with some wd40 getting ready to do my rear carrier swap today when I spotted an issue with the new carrier. The stock 72 unit is uniform all around the bolt circle (see A) however the replacement 81 unit has 2 of the bolt holes raised up about 3-4 inches(see B). A quick look at the factory manual shows the studs are threaded into the housing so in theory I would "simply" replace 2 of the studs with the appropriate longer stud. Does this ring a bell with anyone? How hard will the studs be to remove? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

_________________


Three Amigos

Yup, I did this. You remove those two studs and use long bolts--I think something around 90mm is the correct length. You can remove studs by threading on two nuts, tightening the nuts against one another, then use a wrench on the inner nut to unscrew the stud. I got my long bolts at Pep Boys, make sure they are Grade 8.8 (they'll say 8.8 on the bolt head), and the Pep Boys ones were. That's equivalent to Grade 5 in an SAE bolt, which is the minimum tensile strength you'll want for this. You'll see that when you remove the studs the holes are thru, not blind, so you can safely err on the side of a longer bolt, within reason (e.g., 100 mm long bolts are too long) without worrying that the bolts will bottom out and snap off. Lastly, when re-tightening, I broke a stud using the factory torque spec so be careful (but any stud you break/replace can be replaced with a bolt). M8-1.25 is the size.

Thanks for the quick help. I was thinking the double nut trick would work to remove the studs.

I am back in action.

_________________


Three Amigos