Joseph H. Smith

My truck has 141,000 miles on it and I do all of my own maintenance. At 140,000 I pulled the back wheels to inspect the brakes and found a leaking wheel cylinder on the passenger side. When I pulled the hub cap on the drivers side I found just the head of the axle to hub bolt floating free. Well I ordered 2 from the dealership and I took off the wheel again and removed the remaining 7 bolts. I was able to remove the broken bolt with a pair of vise grips as it stuck out quite a bit. I put a new gasket on and dried everything up and put the 7 original bolts in and one new one. My torque wrenches are all calibrated yearly and so far have always been received in tolerance at the cal facility. I snugged the bolts down and then proceeded to use the torque wrench to tighten them to specs (90 ftbls according to the dodge maintenance manuals which I have). The first bolt gave no resistance and just snapped right at the head. I pulled it all back off and removed the broken bolt and put the spare I had purchased in its place. I began again to torque them down and 3 in a row snapped without even getting to 20 ftlbs. The 6th one was the first to not snap at the head but about a 1/3 of the way down the bolt. I decided to stop testing them and replace all of them. I have not tried the right side as I am just going to replace them. The 2 new ones torqued ok.

The maual does not say that these are one time (or more) use bolts. I have had this off before around 60,000 miles ago to replace the wheel seal and at the same time I had to buy a die set to repair the threads on the axle housing as the threads on the large nut were shaved. I bought a new nut and repaired the poor workmanship on the threads (DANA80) and the hub nut went on without a problem. The axle to hub bolts also went on without a problem. I have had no overheating (grabbing) brakes in the back and I haul nothing. The bolts sounded like easy outs do when they break. Like they were very brittle. After inspecting them I found that a couple had signs of being cracked for sometime as there was surface corrosion inside the brake area.

Has anyone seen a recall or any other info on this. This is a very potentially dangerous problem. I would suspect that a lot or series of lots got thru the factory with a maufacturing error.

I found only one thread on this from Twodiesels titled "rear axle problem" 17 Dec 05. He thought that he had overtorqued one as it broke as well. Since he said that he thought he overtorqued I assume he was not using a torque wrench. I would bet that he did not come close to 90 ftlbs. I will try and come up with a camera tomorrow to post some pix. Any comments would be appreciated ( especially if you have experienced this already). This may be a fairly widespread problem that is just begining to surface.

9 sec camaro

I was going to replaice the seal on my 98 axel about a year ago broke two bolts trying to get them out. Decidid to drive the truck until the weekend to replaice all the bolts and seal. I never made to the weekend backed out of buddy's drive way put in first gear and broke the rest of the bolts in the street. Towed it home and fixed it.

Joseph H. Smith

Was it just one side? If so which? Did you replace just the one side or both sides? I called a dodge dealership in Oregon and they confirmed the 90 ftlbs and said that they have not had to change many seals but have not had any problems yet with any bolts breaking. Joe

infidel

If you find out the reason they break I'd be happy to know.
Never had them break on a pickup but several GMC dump trucks I've owned did it about as fast as you could replace them.

9 sec camaro

I only replaiced the drivers side. If you are going to remove them you will have to heat the hub because the bolts have a lock patch on them.