Right hand frame tube

[Glyn Pickering]

Apologies if this has been suggested before.

I replaced the two bottom 8mm bolts (which have 10mm frame tube holes) with  10mm bolts. If you take a good quality (not cheap jap/chinese) 10mm tap you can tap out the hole in the frame right the way through without any drilling. Use plenty of grease and keep taking the tap out and clean all the swarf off, more grease and go again. A bit slow but you end up with a fully 10mm tapped hole. I'm going to finish it off with an extra long bolt with a locknut on the end. Don't rush the job since there's nothing worse that a broken tap in a hole (there's a song there somewhere).  

Members -thanks for all good advice so far. Found tapers in the steering head when I stripped it so someone who cared must have owned it at some stage.

Member Hamptoncarmody - my mail is pickteam@xtra.co.nz if you'd like to drop a mail, be good to exchange ideas. I can't access the members details for some reason.

Cheers
Glyn :)

[jasonm.]

I did the same but with 3/8" grade 8 bolts. Which are virtually 10mm. But I did all 4 bolts not just the lower 2. Reading my tap chart it does say to drill to a bigger size than 8mm.

[Walt_M.]

I haven't looked at this area of the frame to see if the larger bolt might actually weaken the connection but I will. I was also wondering if the 8mm bolts might be a contributing factor in the high speed wobble that somebody wrote about some time ago. A 'too small' bolt might be tight but allow movement that is not easily detected.