BradW
Flat Rock, Alabama
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2Gordons wrote: What's a good source for grade 8 bolts? Any of the national chains or big-box retailers?
Tractor Supply has them. Lowes and Home Depot have some. You can order them online from McMaster Carr.
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landyacht318
Near a large body of water
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Joined: 07/11/2007
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Napa usually has a good supply of grade 5 and 8 on hand.
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rexford
San Jose Ca
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Grade 8 hardware can be found at Orchard or Ace.
Not sure about Lowes but Home Depot does not have
it. At least in my area they don't.
You can identify grade 8 hardware by the fact that
they are still in one piece. Actually grade 8 hardware
has a line to each point on the head where as grade 5
has 3 lines.
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KKELLER14K
BEAVERTON OREGON
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I totally agree with Brad on his second comment ......It should look something like this othewise that lower bracket will just come loose under load. Glad to see you got it 2G, you'll like the setup.
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BradW
Flat Rock, Alabama
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Good photo. Yes, thats how ours were attached to the factory overload spring on our 2001 F-350.
Brad
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SoCalDesertRider
SanDiego, CA, USA
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BradW wrote:
From the photo, it looks like you did a good job getting your upper and lower brackets aligned and spaced properly.
There are two things you might want to consider:
1) If those are grade 5 fasteners in the upper bracket, I would replace them with grade 8. I have broken a “few” grade 5 upper airbag bracket bolts.
2) Did the installation instructions give you the option of attaching the lower bracket to just the factory overload leaf using shorter bolts and a small cross bracket? With the lower bracket attached to both the overload and regular leafs, I would be concerned that the bracket would be loose when the suspension articulates and compresses the overload leaf. Can your suspension compress that far with the airbags in place?
Brad In that design, it would be much better to re-design the lower brackets to eliminate clamping them around any spring at all, and instead have them mount directly to the upper spring plate, using the u-bolts as the attatchment. This would require slightly longer u-bolts and new nuts to be installed at time of air bag installation, but would be the correct way to design the brackets and do the install.
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SoCalDesertRider
SanDiego, CA, USA
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Home Depot does sell grade-8 hardware. They keep it in the little metal drawers and sell it by the piece. They usually have only a limited selection and most of the times I have had to go to 2 or 3 Home Depots to get all the bolts needed cause they would only have a couple of each size needed in each store. I only go there when I need bolts on the weekend or after normal 8-5 buisness hours. We have 2 very good fastener suppliers nearby here that sell just about any kind of fastener one can imagine, in just about any size and grade too. What they don't stock (which is alot), they can get on order in a short time. Thier prices are good too. One is Bolts-4-U, a Winzer company, which is probly nationwide, the other is ABABA-QA, which may only be local.
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Michigan Rod
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After following this thread I had to go out and check my bags. I have the Air Lift where the brackets wrap around my axle and not the leaf springs. I do need to change out the bolts for grade 8.
Good thread with good information...thanks.
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KKELLER14K
BEAVERTON OREGON
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The "universal" bracket wasn't so universal in my application. It was too tall so I cut it down to fit right on top of the spring pack. Look close in the pic. The DRW Dodges have a lot of spring travel also so you have to stretch out the bag just a little otherwise it will bottom out. This is why some bolts get broken and brackets damaged. My advice is to measure the amount of travel unloaded and loaded then see how much more room the bags need to travel to keep them from bottoming out. Nothing worse than having them installed wrong, it ruins the experience.
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Reddog1
El Dorado, CA
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I have sheared bolts on the upper brackets. Each time, I discovered the other bolts on the upper bracket were loose. I changed the nuts to nylock (self-locking), and I have not sheared a bolt in over two years now. I use grade 5 bolts.
I think the bolts are sheared when they become loose, and you hit a bump hard.
I prefer to put the nut on the outside of the frame, with the head of the bolt on the inside. At a glance, I can see if any of the nuts are loose.
Wayne
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