Good afternoon. I always wanted a project and now I have one. I was doing my brakes on my Dodge 1500 4x4 (1996) and found the the lower caliper bolt on the passenger side won’t seat all the way. It appears that the threads are gauled at a certain point. Does any one know what size tap is needed to rethread the hole or do I need to replace the whole knuckle. If I have to replace then I will replace the bearing, U joint, and ball joints. Hoping I can just tap the hole. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

 

Take one of the bolts (preferably, one that is in good condition....) to your local hardware store. They'll have a thread gauge, and can get you the right size tap. Try that first.

 

I’m going to order new ones. I just remembered after I wrote this I have a machine shop at work. They should be able to measure it and probably will have the tap as well. As for now she is back together and parked until I get her fixed. Thank you for the suggestion.

 

If it's fubar'd Dorman makes repair bolts that are self tapping and step up a size. I had to use them on a '99 1500 once.

 

Research for an H5044 pin suggests M8x1 which is fine thread M8, but I coulda sworn they're an oddball M11x1.5. Even M8x1.00 is kinda odd, with M8x1.25 being ubiquitous.

M8 sounds too small to me. Subaru uses that on their caliper pin bolts

Let us know!!

 

Please let us know what the thread size ends up being. I'm curious...

 

I will. I work in an oil refinery so the machine shop should have no issues telling me what size and thread they are.

 

I ordered 2 standard size pins and 2 Dorman oversized pins from Rock auto. Going to get both measured at work. How did the Dorman pins work?

 

Honestly they worked great. And Dorman says to only use one per knuckle but BOTH were trashed so I had no choice and used two Dorman. The lady couldn't afford a new knuckle. It's been probably 6-7 years and she still drives the truck most days.

HOWEVER IIRC I measured the new Dorman pitch and tapped the knuckles first with a hand tap. I don't think I allowed it to just cut its own threads although it is designed to do so.

I'm a machinist by trade so have Huots full of taps, etc and of course thread pitch gauges and all that.

 

^ also as an aside/trivia this was a truck that used 9mm hex in the pin bolts. There was a short run around '99 that did.

No, it wasn't 8mm or 5/16" (same thing when it comes to tools) and it was NOT 3/8" or 10mm.

Ever since I've made sure I have 9mm hex bit sockets in my box because they ARE out there. Of course the Dorman used a more standard hex key -- I think 10mm