Stop in for a cup of coffee
When they launched the 97 Dakota, they changed over from english to metric threads for the bumper bolts... I took on the task for changing all the bumper bolts in the Ram to match the same thread as the Dakota bumpers which were done in the same station on the assembly line (they build Rams and Dakotas on the same line one after the other in no particular order)...
Originally the english threads were 7/16" for the smaller diameter ones and 1/2" for the larger diameter ones, requiring two different sockets (11/16" and 3/4") to attach the brackets to the bumper and the bumper assembly to the frame...
When I changed them, now all the bolts and nuts for the front and rear bumpers were all the same and you could assemble and mount the bumper brackets and bumper to the truck with just one 18 mm socket... We had metal brackets on the dual bolt portion and a metal flag on the single bolt portion that would keep the bolt head from spinning and requiring another hand to hold a combination wrench to keep them from spinning when running the nuts down... You could just let the metal tabs keep the bolts from spinning and now the operators could use one hand or both on the hand gun to torque the bumper nuts to 75 ft * lb... any bolt or nut that had over 40 ft *lb of torque required a "torque assist"/support to help control the gun from kicking back when reaching torque...
Not to mention that we made 750,000 Rams per year with about 18 of those fasteners for the bumpers, so we bought literally over to 10 million nuts per year from that supplier plus the volume for the Dakota and were able to get them at the lowest cost for that high of volume... Once you get over 1 million of the nuts or bolts, you get the lowest possible cost (economy of scale)...
So all you need to remove and install the bumpers on the two trucks is one 18 mm socket.... :D :steering: :thumbsup:
Now people that work on them can't say, "what was the engineer thinking when he designed this"??? :realcrazy:
That was me and I did it to make it easier on everyone, the factory and service people to work on... :thumbsup: :steering: :thankyou:
When they launched the 97 Dakota, they changed over from english to metric threads for the bumper bolts... I took on the task for changing all the bumper bolts in the Ram to match the same thread as the Dakota bumpers which were done in the same station on the assembly line (they build Rams and Dakotas on the same line one after the other in no particular order)...
Originally the english threads were 7/16" for the smaller diameter ones and 1/2" for the larger diameter ones, requiring two different sockets (11/16" and 3/4") to attach the brackets to the bumper and the bumper assembly to the frame...
When I changed them, now all the bolts and nuts for the front and rear bumpers were all the same and you could assemble and mount the bumper brackets and bumper to the truck with just one 18 mm socket... We had metal brackets on the dual bolt portion and a metal flag on the single bolt portion that would keep the bolt head from spinning and requiring another hand to hold a combination wrench to keep them from spinning when running the nuts down... You could just let the metal tabs keep the bolts from spinning and now the operators could use one hand or both on the hand gun to torque the bumper nuts to 75 ft * lb... any bolt or nut that had over 40 ft *lb of torque required a "torque assist"/support to help control the gun from kicking back when reaching torque...
Not to mention that we made 750,000 Rams per year with about 18 of those fasteners for the bumpers, so we bought literally over to 10 million nuts per year from that supplier plus the volume for the Dakota and were able to get them at the lowest cost for that high of volume... Once you get over 1 million of the nuts or bolts, you get the lowest possible cost (economy of scale)...
So all you need to remove and install the bumpers on the two trucks is one 18 mm socket.... :D :steering: :thumbsup:
Now people that work on them can't say, "what was the engineer thinking when he designed this"??? :realcrazy:
That was me and I did it to make it easier on everyone, the factory and service people to work on... :thumbsup: :steering: :thankyou: