What Grade Bolts for Hubs??

[Roger]

Did not find this with the search engine so forgive me if this has already been discussed...  What grade bolts should be used to secure the Warn locking hubs to the housing?  I have replaced with Dualmatic locking hubs with a good set of old school Warn Locking Hubs and the Warn hubs came with Home Depot stainless bolts... yet the Dualmatic had Grade 5 bolts.  I totally understand the better grade bolts for strength but were the bolts ever intended to act as shear bolts just in case someone did something wrong?  Or Grade 5 is appropriate and I should quit thinking so much?

Thank you... still trying to figure out this Jeep thing 

[oldtime]

I personally feel that soft grade II bolts might be considered as ideal.
One could consider them  as an intended weak link that is used n order to protect expensive and/or hard to access axle components.
If one never intentionally abuses the axles then grade 5 would also be acceptable.
Hubs will surely break before a any grade 8 bolts would give away.
Bottom line...
I suggest you run grade 5 unless you are seriously concerned about breaking expensive or hard to access axle components.

[duffer]

The Warns and every other "external" type hub do indeed put those bolts in shear and they are the means through which torque is transferred from the locking hub to the wheel hub.

I'm one for making that connection as strong as you can.  There should be some threads at ECJ5 dealing with using studs to secure the hub.  When I was assembling my axle for my 3B, I tried to source some grade 8 studs but couldn't find any-anywhere.  I'm not sure you would gain much using grade 5 studs.  I ended buying longer grade 8 bolts, cut them to the needed lengths, and threaded the ends.  Short of all that work, I think just using grade 8 bolts should suffice.  But not just any grade 8 bolts.  If you look at the wheel hub threaded bores, you will note that those are un-threaded for maybe a 1/4".  It is very important that a full cross-section of the bolt passes that contact between the locking hub and the wheel hub.  If the bolt is threaded there, I'm guessing you loose at least 30% of the strength.

And last, and maybe most important, torque them evenly and recheck them at least annually.

Here is a photo of one of my finished studs.  Note the un-threaded portion below the blue tape.  That is the section that fits in the un-threaded section of the wheel hub bore.



The finished hubs-and my appologies for the IH logo-but those outers were in the best condition of any of the 8 pairs of hubs I used to assemble these.

[Roger]

Thanks Old Time and Duffer.  My 3A came with a set of Dualmatic hubs that were a little beat and that is why I went with the old Warn locking hubs.  Those hubs had Grade 8 and they looked like they were original.  So... before reading this I had gone out and bought some Grade 8s that were longer and engaged more of the hubthreads.  Hoping to get it all back together this weekend.  The setup that Duffer has is pretty sweet and clean.  I wonder if ARP has some studs that would work??