Flywheel Bolt Failure

Just though I would post a little problem I found on a friends 730D.
~He has been complaining that his flywheel keeps loosening up after a hard use & he has to keep tightening the bolts.
~I finally got around to looking at it today & found the bolts have stretched [probably from overtightening on one or more occasion], they are both about 3/16" longer than they were from production. ~You can see the thread stretch & necking down of the bolt just behind where the nut was. ~Look those flywheel bolts over very carefully when you have them out or if they are/were loose.

On the subject of fasteners, is there any downside (other than cost) to using stainless steel bolts during a restoration?

Back in like '58, my dad's good friend, a mechanic at the local JD dealer came over one night to help find the origins of a knock in our '48 "A". After he listened to it, he removed the flywheel bolts and showed Dad that the old ones were longer. He said that he always replaced flywheel bolts after about two seasons, or three or four good tightenings. Then he said that those "new"diesels were worse, and the guys typically replaced those bolts every time they were out. I remember that like it was yesterday, and I've always done that.

I made a lot of hitch pins that way over the years, but I thought it was cheap insurance.

Frank-in-Tallahassee
70D // 855

Replacing these bolts with something from a bolt specialty isn't the answer either. Had 60 with a fly wheel knock. I parked that flywheel & bought another. A friend needed one for an A cyclone. I told him it had problems & gave it to him. He bought grade 8 fine thread bolts & installed it. Long pipe & kept tighting down until knock went away. Thought he had it fixed? About 6 months later the flywheel shatterd while running! He lived to tell the story! But needed many more parts. RLA

Even garden variety ASA 400 print film will give you a far better continuous tone print for an 8x10. The current top line digital cameras are better suited for snapshots in my view.

You can always digitize after the fact, as current flatbed scanners are fairly good, and fairly cheap. I bought an HP 1200 dpi scanner around 10 years ago for mega bucks. Now the same capability is available for less than a tenth of the price.

Of the digital cameras we have around, our favorite is a Panasonic 1.3 with 1.44 or 120mb super disk. Reason is, no messing with memory modules or USB umbicals - just pop floppies in and out. So easy, it makes up for its clunky size.

Even the low res clunker will give you pics that are 150 to 300K. So it's good to have some photo editing software -- your friends with dial up access will thank you if you've shrunk a file down to 60 or 80K through editing.

As with all electronics, don't buy it now; the price will be going down. With even Wally World warning Wall Street about bleak Christmas sales - they'll be much cheaper Dec. 26, if not sooner.

Steve