Technical Aftermarket spring shackles, really?

Just got these from Snyders and this happened when tightening them up. Really? Nothing was out of whack , nothing binding and snap! Wow.


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Holy Cow,they shouldn't snap like that. HRP

 

That's because they're made from off-shore "metal." And probably cast from that "metal."

 

The zerk end looks quite non- uniform. Sad. Safety? Screw safety, profit is where it's at!

 

I'm sure they will make it good but do you really want a replacement from them. HRP

 

scary

 

I call bullshit on this one. Those castle nuts should thread onto the pin past the cotter pin hole by hand before requiring any torque at all. You really shouldn't have even needed a wrench on it at that point. The thrust face of that castle nut shows scoring, meaning you were putting significant pressure on it while turning, probably trying to pull the shackle into the spring eye. Also, I don't see any sign of grease on the pins at all, and they should be lubed when installed. That has snapped at the weakest point because you were putting pressure where they should never be any.

I could be wrong, but I calls em like I sees em sometimes, LOL.

 

so im not the only guy that has has that trouble.. i bought a set from macs that did the same damn thing.. come to find out, the thread pitch was just a hair different from the nut to the shackle.. It went on 3/4 of the way and got snug.. so i grabbed a wrench and just went to snug it up and it came right apart. i called macs to let them know what happened and i got the same line of BS, "did you lube them, dod you pull the spring in with them" "did you use an impact gun?" so i did some further inspection of the ones i havent installed yet and they drilled the cotter pin hole offset and one side was really thin, and if you know how steel works, one little thin spit and it will tear like a sheet of paper. its a shackle! if it cant take any pressure, i dont want my happy ass riding 65 mph down the highway. NO WAY!
also if you look at a shackle castle nut, they have a flat round boss on the back side.. i dont buy the SCORING comment above...

 

I agree totally with Wizzbang . Either the nut was cross threaded from the start or what Wizzbang said. The nut never made it to the cotter pin hole. I'd say operator error.

 

X 2

 

Whizzbang nailed it. Makes one wonder about the integrity of the rest of the car.

 

Easy guys, all I was doing was trying to show a defective part. As far as "integrity of the entire car", my T has been put together very safely without cutting corners. All of the nuts are super tight, I had to use a wrench to get them off as they came out of the box. I thought that was strange. I had the shackles all completely in, they were not tightened to "draw" in the shackles. They were pretty tight when I was putting them on and that one snapped. Now there could have been a error on my part to use them in the first place as I think they all are messed up or crossthreaded.


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I doubt they're cross threaded, but many after market parts built overseas have odd threads. Not uncommon for the threads on the shank and threads on the nuts to not match. If that nut didn't start on by hand, you should have stopped and checked to see if the nut or the shackle bolt threads were bad. I usually run a tap and die over them if they don't start by hand.

 

Does the side plate fit over the shoulders of the studs properly?
Were you trying to use the castle nuts to seat the side plate in place?

 

I agree. The nut should not have been tight at that location.

 

That rather looks like a case of "if it won't on easily get a longer handled ratchet and put more pressure on it thing.
I'm like the others though in that if it broke when you were only tightening up the nut why is the back side of the nut galled from turning against metal? I've put a few thousand castle nuts on and back on when I was doing front end work daily for a number of years and there were damned few that wouldn't screw on with my fingers right up until you hit the part that they were going to hold against. It could be bad threads or a burred hole but that galling on the nut says we don't have the whole story.

 

That's a BS assumption. Not sure how you can speak authoritatively on the build quality of a car you've never seen in person...

Broken reproduction shackles are well known in the Model A world.

 

It may not be build quality at all, it may be the method or tool he used to tighten the nut. Putting it on a turn or so and hitting it with the impact wrench could have had the same results if the threads weren't right. All we can tell is that something wasn't right and it broke or something wasn't done right and it got broken.

 

Wow! Mr. White, was that broken shackle made of cast steel or regular steel, like 1020?
If you run a smooth file across it does it feel hardened, like smooth glass. I am just curious. Glad you caught it in time. I made my own rear shackles out of 3/8 thick mild steel 50 years ago and they are still working fine.

 

Is there a number for offshore 'steel'? LOL I call it 'slag'.
This is a textbook example of manufacturer error, from the 'quality' of the material thru the threading of the studs; the off-center cotter pin bore simply wraps the package.

 

Yeah, I should have realized something was wrong when I was tightening it up. The first three were hard to put on as well but they didn't break. I do see the galling on the nut now but don't really know what that is from as the back plates were on. This was the last nut that needed to be tightened. In no way can you turn these on by hand, they are that tight. I took them all off and I think I am going to try to find some nos ones.

 

Probably Chinese knockoff


Posted from Austinrod

 

FWIW I have shackles from Bratton's and they seemed fine when I assembled them . Screwed on by hand easily. They look a little different than yours too. So maybe they are a different manufacture?

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A good quality forged steel OE part would have pulled the plate over the shoulder and the spring into place without breaking.

Mart.

 

I've worked with setting up a lot of tie rod ends in my day and I had many tie rods where the threads had to be chased or the nuts replaced because the thread wasn't deep enough. These were tie rod ends made in the U.S. , Germany, India

 

When Ford used a forging in a part capable of killing you, it is wise to seek out at least a forged replacement or at best an original that you can use, even if you have to build up material or seek odd bushings.
I have no idea what is in your pic, but I kinda doubt that it is made of anything you want to hang your life on.
Details like cotter pin holes say a lot about what the manufacturer, the machine operator, and the vendor (Really??!? We NEVER had one of those break before!!") (reading off of typed script taped to the wall over phone.)
cast thread would be terrifying, cut threads a little disturbing...never examined an A shackle closely, but betcha Ford found a way to roll the threads.
In Model A/Early V8 days Ford not only used the best steels and methods, usually of their own formulation, they did 100% Brinnel checking after the dimensional checking on things like steering arms. Run THAT past the Peking/Mac axis of evil...

(someone mentioned Bratton's...they are actually selective, if more than one version of an item is reproduced, and you will find notes in their catalog describing the inadequacies of parts that are not available in a good quality.)

 

What gets me the most is not the cheap, imported parts available today... but the total ignorance on the installers end. I'm not saying he (or anyone else) is at fault for them breaking... but your really going to come onto an online forum, and whine about a set of $17 shackles? OF COURSE they are cheapo imported shackles. DUH they cost $17!!!

CHASE THE THREADS NEXT TIME... or pay the big bucks for parts that are higher quality.

 

Looks like the ones I have, and I think the company I bought them from are using Snyders as a supplier. Thanks for the heads up, I will investigate my shackles and check the threads before fitting them.

 

See my previous post. I do not use repro suspension parts.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/model-a-spring-brackets.876338/#post-9658816
John

 

After reading this thread, first thoughts were trying to draw it together with the nuts,. The OP then qualified that isn't what happened. My guess would be one set of threads was SAE and the other set was metric. Sometimes they match. sometimes they don't.