Chinese bolts?

Bought supposedly grade 8 7/16 bolts from fastenall to secure backhoe teeth to the receiver on my rear bucket.they usually don't last 20 minutes while the "same" bolt from another source lasts a month or more.chinese?

Or cheap USA trying to compete with free trade bolts made to a higher quality in China where they pay the workers 50 cents day . bought a come a long I thought o boy its made in the USA didn't last through 2 jobs bought a Chinese one and finally broke it with a 3 foot cheater on the handle

Grade 8 only designates the yield strength of the material used to make the bolt, not the material itself. Many different alloys can be heat-treated to achieve the strength required to comply with a grade 8 rating. Some of those materials are more abrasion resistant than others.

fastenall is mostly Chinese,,they don't care about quality and will stamp anything on the head to make it sell,,they make them out of the same stuff that Licorice is made from..stay away from them..

If a hardware supplier knowingly misrepresents hardware by not having the material properties match the grade stamping it is a violation of US law. I'm not saying this doesn't happen but Public Law 101-592 is in the books to at least discourage it.

At work when we see hardware issues pop up in applications where problems haven't been seen before we first look to see if the type of plating or other surface treatment changed. If the bolt, nut, or washer gets a surface treatment that lowers the coefficient of friction below what was used in the past the previous tightening torque can generate enough clamp load to fail the bolt. Having oil on the threads or face of the nut where the torque is specified for a dry connection can also cause failures for the same reason. The hardware material strength is easy to focus on but in 20+ years at my job I've never seen a piece of hardware tested in our lab that didn't meet the minimum requirements of the grade it was stamped with, regardless of the country it was sourced from. As I said above, I'm sure it does happen but in my experience (so far, at least) it has always been some other variable that causes problems, not the hardware material itself.

If they are low quality they are probably made in USA.

There is a range a bolt can fall into and still be classified a grade 5 or 8 it?s not just 60,000 psi tensile strength or whatever the case may be for particular grade or you don?t make the cut .

Just before I retired I delivered several 30,000 lb. loads of bolts and nut into an Industry that made bolts and nuts here in this country. Both loads went right into scrap dumpster.

The standards call out a minimum tensile and yield strength for each grade - there is no upper limit specified.

I am a redneck Texan! Period!

I have come to respect the oriental mind set, work ethic, and ability to produce precision products. Many are superior to domestic.

The buyer sets the standard in the specification for the product.

If you specify junk you get it. Precision you get it. Don't knock something just because it isn't made here. You are selling yourself short in what you choose to purchase.

AvE on youtube recently did a test of various bolts and found the Chinese bolt from the box store was modestly STRONGER than the domestically made bolt.

(quoted from post at 05:10:21 04/03/18) I am a redneck Texan! Period!

I have come to respect the oriental mind set, work ethic, and ability to produce precision products. Many are superior to domestic.

The buyer sets the standard in the specification for the product.

If you specify junk you get it. Precision you get it. Don't knock something just because it isn't made here. You are selling yourself short in what you choose to purchase.

Click to expand...

And they've been doing excellent work since we were throwing rocks to kill our food. Now that they're people are getting a taste of prosperity they are a force to be reckoned with. But that prosperity also means their prices are going up. I'm not yet ready for precision products from Sri Lanka but India is doing pretty good with Mahindra and lots of other products.

I buy USA when I can and local (don't want to lose the hardware store we have) but we just don't compete in lots of areas, TV's and computers being two. But we build pretty good Hondas and Toyotas, better than the Mexican Fords and Chevys.

I have yet to find any hardware or plumbing supplies from China that has any quality in it.

The computer and monitor you're reading this on was probably made in China.

Yes there is

The chart shows the grade 8 bolt is spec'd to be made of "Medium Carbon Steel". Here is a clip of the range of material that can be defined as Medium Carbon Steel.

Medium Carbon Steel – Composition of 0.29%-0.54% carbon, with 0.60%-1.65% manganese. Medium carbon steel is ductile and strong, with long-wearing properties.

Of particular interest is the 1% swing in allowable manganese. Manganese improves the wear resistance of steel substantially. So if you get a grade 8 bolt that was made with the manganese content near the upper allowable limit it will be noticeably more wear resistant than a grade 8 bolt made from steel near the low limit of manganese.

For Gr2 and Gr5 hardware there are two different minimum strengths depending on the diameter of the bolt. So, for a given size of bolt there is no range, just a minimum.

I never knew the source on hardware. On plumbing, never saw nor looked for the source. Again, the buyer sets the specs. If he/she's trying to lowball the market it will be cheap.

I recently found some incredible deals on little things you use when making wooden model ships and things were in the 1-5 dollar range for things you would expect to pay 5-10x. Some were excellent, precision instruments, and other things were unfinished, like a scapel holder for #11 Scalpel blades. Same size, material and shape as the one surgeons use but totally unfinished without polishing or shaping. Still had the raw edges from the stamping machine. Cost was about 2 bucks as I recall with about a dozed surgical quality blades.....free shipping.