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Date:    Thu, 15 Mar 2001 20:10:45 -0600
From:    Larry Alofs <lalofs@ENTERACT.COM>
Subject: Re: exhaust nuts and bolts

Tom Goff wrote:
I am soliciting advice from the group concerning the replacement of all
bolts/nuts (metric 8-1.25 of various lengths) with stainless steel,

> berillium, or whatever it takes to make this job less painfull in the
> future.------------------------------------------------
> Tom Goff - 1984 full Westy - original ower, 92K miles - Highland, MD

About a year ago I switched to stainless steel bolts with anti-seize
compound.  It made things easier when I had to pull a head about 6 months
later.

Larry A.

I dunno about you guy's, but I think that the particular material that the fasteners are made of is of less importance than making sure that all "pipe to head" bolts are
replaced with STUDS with loctite on them. This 8mm "bolt in aluminum" is another example of a bad VW idea. The little aluminum holes just don't deal well with all that "in and
out" biz. Replace all of them with studs and then it's the stud that takes the wear, not the vulnurable hole. They can be made of spun balonium for all I care. Just use loctite
on the stud/head and never sieze on the stud/nut. You gotta be pretty heavy handed to actually pull the stud out of the hole, and if you screw up the stud threads every once in
a while, you can easily replace the stud. I HATE HELI COILS!!!!

Oh, the rear, left side, top stud may interfere a bit with getting the exhaust pipe back on, I just trimmed the flange a wee bit for clearance. NO LEAKY!!!

Oh, I bought a new wire feed welder yesterday! I've wanted one of those for a long time, I know your all very happpy for me. It's for welding in the new panels I bought for
.... hmmm, roo? No subie, but it's brown and has a nice big comfortable pocket for people too sleep in, and it likes to hop all over the place with me in it... but, everyone is
going to think there is a subie in it... (there may be someday). Am I duplicating someones elses moniker?

One more thing, I'm planning on building some burly custom pipe bumpers for this van, I like the idea of getting rear ended at 20mph and not having a scratch on the van. I
don't think this is Tacky, am I just showing my dukes of hazzard influence?

Cheerio,
mark...