Michael Maskalans <dml@tepidcola.com> wrote:
[...]
: for way more than you want to know about metalurgy in a pretty
: easy-to-understand format, check out this article that billavista wrote on
: pirate 4x4
: <http://www.pirate4x4.com/tech/billavista/PR-BV60/index1a.html>
I just wanted to post a big "thank you" to Mike for his
reply and the link above. I was looking at the whole grade 5/8
thing completely wrong! The cliff notes version is that its
true that grade 8 is more brittle than grade 5, but like Mike
said, a load high enough to break a grade 8 is way more than
enough to shatter a grade 5 as well. A way to think about it
might be comparing a steel rod to one made of solder or rubber.
You can bend the solder/rubber back and forth all day without
breaking it, whereas the steel will snap. However, obviously
the steel pin is better for a load bearing application. The
steel is more brittle than the solder/rubber, but that doesn't
make it more likely to break than the solder, because there are
many other factors that need to be brought into consideration
such as the strength of the material, its use, etc.
For the important stuff, I'll be using grade 8 from now on.
As far as the OEMs go, I was assuming that they were using
grade 5 instead of 8 because of the brittle thing, which I now
know not to be true. I'm guessing the real reason there is so
much grade 5 used is because they need something stronger than
grade 2, grade 5 is strong enough for the application, and
so they don't want to spend the extra money on grade 8 for
extra strength that they don't need.
Thanks again, Mike!
--
-Jon-
.- Jon Steiger -- jon@dakota-truck.net or jon@jonsteiger.com -.
| '96 Kolb Firefly, '96 Suzuki Intruder, Miscellaneous Mopars |
`-------------------------------- http://www.jonsteiger.com --'
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