I am very glad to see one of the more respected contributors to the List, and to the Delorean community at large, adding comments to this ongoing discussion. I truly believe that everyone can learn something from focused dialog. I will agree that the incidence of total bolt failure due to fracture has a relatively low rate in the overall fleet. However, the bolt bending and corrosion issues have a much higher degree of incidence from my limited experience. I've personally had one break, and the other bend, so I am particularly sensitive to this. As I recall, in the seven cars that I worked on at the tech session that I mentioned, including my own, we found 5 or 6 that were bent, 1 or 2 others that had wear grooves or other marks on the shank from joint component movement, and 2 or 3 other with corrosion and rust. So, on the low side, there were 8 bolts that had some form of challenge. The bolts in my car were fresh due to the earlier failures, but I put in the custom bolts anyway. Based on the analysis of my fractured bolt, using a scanning electron microscope, it would appear that any stress concentration could eventually lead to fracture. Corrosion pits, and wear grooves seem to be an invitation for a crack to start, particularly at stress levels that are high enough to cause yielding (bending and/or stretching). It would be very interesting to get a sense of how many owners have experienced TAB problems, ranging from wear, to corrosion, to bending and yielding, and to complete failure. My limited experience would suggest between 1/3 and 1/2 of cars currently in active duty. Those are pretty high numbers for a critical joint with no significant structural redundancy. Would a poll be useful? I don't really know the protocol because I'm relatively new to the list. BTW - The current list of "interested parties" for the custom bolts is at about 40 - 41 sets. In discussions with Darryl at Specialty Automotive, a reasonable threshhold of 50 - 55 sets would give us the confidence to move forward with the necessary upfront investment. I will keep you all updated as the project nears a launch point. Let's keep up the good dialog. Toby Peterson VIN 2248 Winged1 --- In dmcnews@xxxx, "DMC Joe" <dmcjoe@xxxx> wrote: > John, >The trailing arm bolt failure problem is highly exaggerated and >actually has a very low incident rate. Yes; it should be of concern >to all owners who have not inspected and or replaced damaged >components. > > DMC Joe > DeLorean Help dmchelp@xxxx > www.dmc.tv