Stiffening plate removal / reinstallation

[bcredliner]

Originally Posted by crystalworks

Agreed. But at some point collective information becomes accepted practice. Some will never change their mind, and that's fine. If it gives someone the warm and fuzzies to reuse these bolts... have at it. If it makes you feel safer or otherwise in a better place, it makes sense.
Collective information can become the practice. The amount of input here is insufficient to be extrapolated to an accepted practice. Even if the input were sufficient it is still conjecture so a decision to reuse the bolts is flawed.
Head bolts are an apples/oranges analogy though. No one should ever reuse head bolts. There are TONS of documented cases/information of what can happen reusing them. And they are cheaper than the stiffening plate bolts/nuts anyway and not a regularly removed service item. There are no cases of any negative affects of reusing the stiffening plate fasteners except for one user here I believe who reported a squeak or noise from the plate. I am not trying to convince anyone of anything. Just counterpointing your last post.

Using head bolt data was intentional. The way it is apples to apples is both use torque to yield bolts and once they are torqued they can't be properly torqued again. The number of instances of failure has nothing to do with it. There are no cases that you know of where the plate bolts failed, that is different than no cases. I contend that it is so hard to justify the cost of the bolts that we jump to accept any input that even remotely supports not making the purchase. Cost should not be considered in the decision. Same input--until we know why BMW uses TTY bolts and the associated level of risk the only think we know is we saved money. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything either.