While cleaning and prepping the rear swaybar for install I remembered I wanted to post about reuse of locking fasteners.
Lock washers, nylock nuts, tapered thread nuts, and other locking fasteners work best the first time they're used and in many cases are considered single use fasteners. I see far too many instances where people building/rebuilding cars remove and reinstall these types of fasteners over and over to the point the fastener has no locking effect before the car ever hits the road. Then when the car starts being used various things start loosening up.
For a rebuild like this one I lay out all the parts. Then I take one of each locking fastener and tag it as to where it goes and how many I need, go to Fastenal, hardware store, Home Depot or wherever and buy all new fasteners. When I get them, I bag and tag them to be used during final install. It's cheap insurance that I won't be sidelined in the middle of an event or stranded roadside. I don't replace all the hardware, only the locking pieces.
In the last pic you can see there's two nylock nuts on the bottom of the shock absorber. I run two different rear ends, one for drags and one for high speed. I'd swapped the rear a couple times and removed the shocks for clearance (reusing the nylock nut) and then during a track session at Road Atlanta I heard a clunking in the rear. So I got off track and pitted only to discover the nylock nut had backed off. Simple fix once I found another nut and just double nutted it, however it cost me most of a track session so probably a couple hundred bucks in track time when all the expenses of a track day are considered. Been double nutted since but getting new nylock nuts for the bottoms of the shocks now.
When I installed the Hotchkis suspension the first time (long ago) I reused the tapered thread nuts that hold the upper control arms to the frame mounts. Took the car to a shop for alignment then took the car on vacation from CT to FL. When I got to FL I heard a clunk in the front end entering a parking lot. Not only had a nut backed off but the alignment shims were gone! Yay! Got to pay for another alignment. So, learn from my mistakes and don't reuse locking fasteners.
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