Thanks for sharing that knowledge and experience with Japanese cars. Well, I do feel that Vanagons have harder bolts and nuts. I rarely had any problems with Germany bolts including those on the exhaust. Using the right tools on Japanese cars are more critical I believe. 

MJ in Sunny California

--- On Fri, 7/23/10, David Beierl <dbeierl@attglobal.net> wrote:

From: David Beierl <dbeierl@attglobal.net>
Subject: Re: [NVC]-Friday Subject: Howto Locite question
To: "M. Jade" <tinho2010@YAHOO.COM>
Cc: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Date: Friday, July 23, 2010, 3:18 PM

> Every time I worked on Japanese cars I seem to always
> have the issue that Japanese bolts, nuts and screws are always made of
> soft metal. If you are not careful they got destroyed and their heads got
> rounded off.

They're made of different grades/heat-treatments of steel just as US and European metric bolts are, and for the same reasons.� Working on a number of Toyotas, one Subaru and one Honda, I've experienced nothing different than when working on Vanagons, except that the Toyota bolts are much more likely to unstick very suddenly and then be immediately removable with the fingers, which points to some advanced engineering in how the bolt head seals to what it's attached to.� Once when I applied grade-8 tightening torque to a grade-4 bolt on a Corolla, the head came off the bolt, but I can't blame that on Toyota.

Yours,
David