Ford Support
John, thanks for your post up on your bolts. We do appreciate you being a supporting vendor to this Forum and you do make an excellent half-shaft bolt package.
PHP:
Accufab quote, "In my opinion, there was no reason why Ford couldn't have done the same thing, and in a timely manner. Why they didn't is a mystery to us here at Accufab."
I have to comment on your and Shadowman's ponderances as to why it took so long for our OEM to come up with a permenant bolt fix. Actually this appears as a bit of Monday Morning Quarterbacking. It is easy in hind sight to point the finger and ask why it took so long to engineer the final fix. Ford as the OEM had an obligation to all 4038 owners to provide a corrective design that would actually address the bolt failure mode which was unknown for many months. An obligation which I might add the GT team took VERY seriously.
Accufab as you said "backed into" the fix only by "accident" (and I will qualify that term) and offered an option for anyone willing to buy your bolt kit if they wanted to. Thus there was no direct obligation that your company HAD to fix this problem or identify what specifically was CAUSING the failure. There is a difference.
As I said you product offering was really no accident for your team wisely went to ARP one of the best, most competent high performance bolt people in the country and sourced a replacement bolt for the ford product which was failing due to electro plating issues, not strength. Thus your product likely will never succumb to the failure mode which affected the Riccardo bolts.
Forum members continually (and mistakenly) bring up the issue of strength and that there has never been a reported failure of the Accufab bolts. That's right! because the bolts (any current offered bolts in our halfshafts) are not (and cannot be) subjected to LOADS which are ANYWHERE NEAR the tensile or shear capacity of the M8 bolt. This would predictedly be one of the first failure scenerios the Ford engineers would collect data on. And they did.
The failure mode which Ford was finally able to identify through numerous tests and analysis of returned failed parts from the dealers was hydrogen embrittlement. Again, NOT STRENGTH. And just because you have driven your GT hard for 15K, 30K, 45K miles (pick a mileage) does not mean you are out of the woods as hydrodgen embrittlement is a time related failure. It works away at the bolt over time and may cause the bolt to fail early, late or never. Lockwiring of the bolt set is another red herring and has nothing to do with the bolt failures. This would only be the case if the bolts were losing torque and backing out which does not appear to be the failure mode. Same goes for all the talk about locktite being on or off the OEM threads.
FGT owners who have installed the Accufab bolt kit for peace of mind deserve everything they paid for and they purchased a fastener kit which will likely never have any problems. Others who opt to have Ford install the latest CA washer bolt combination will have an equivalent level of peace of mind. I encourage all owners to update to one of the two bolt options available to us, and the sooner the better. This issue is really over.
And John thanks again for all your GT product offerings.
