Gene Blister
Member
Equipment
2019 Kubota B2601, FAL LA435, Snow Blower BX2822A, Land Pride rear blade RB1572
“The man who picks up a cat by the tail will get ten times the information of the man who just reads about it.” –Mark Twain
So, the reason shear bolts have a notch, then that smooth, unthreaded section below the head is, after they’ve sheared off, you can get the broken section out of the connecting holes; they pretty much fall right out of my snowblower auger. Change out time: 30 seconds per bolt.
So, when you want to save a few bucks and use regular, fully threaded grade 5 bolts from the CoOp, you’ll spend many hours trying to find the almost invisible remaining section, which is smoothed off and fused into the holes by those very same threads. Then comes the pounding with a punch, the slipping, the bleeding…
So what’s next? Am I looking at drilling out the bolt butt to clear the hole? Alone. In the snow. But hey, I saved almost 15 cents per bolt!
So, the reason shear bolts have a notch, then that smooth, unthreaded section below the head is, after they’ve sheared off, you can get the broken section out of the connecting holes; they pretty much fall right out of my snowblower auger. Change out time: 30 seconds per bolt.
So, when you want to save a few bucks and use regular, fully threaded grade 5 bolts from the CoOp, you’ll spend many hours trying to find the almost invisible remaining section, which is smoothed off and fused into the holes by those very same threads. Then comes the pounding with a punch, the slipping, the bleeding…
So what’s next? Am I looking at drilling out the bolt butt to clear the hole? Alone. In the snow. But hey, I saved almost 15 cents per bolt!