Safety Wiring

Owned by Leif Blake (Deactivated)
Last updated: Oct 13, 2021 by Aidan Lehal
2 min read

What is it?

This is a competition regulation. Essentially, every bolt in the car is held in place by friction. As the car experiences significant vibration while you drive, bolts can come loose. The cleanest way to mitigate this is threading locknuts onto the bolts, which are specifically designed to prevent the bolts from loosening themselves. However, this is not possible where the bolts are threaded into a blind hole.

The solution that we’re required to adopt is safety wiring, which is basically making holes in our bolts and threaded metal wire through them and around/through something else to prevent the bolt from rotating. This must be done wherever a bolt goes into a blind hole, so the following list may not be exhaustive. Feel free to add to it if you find something I’ve missed.

Where on MSXIV?

  • Bolts attaching trailing arm to motor

    • Need holes in trailing arm for thread

    • Bolts are mostly or completely done

  • Hub Nuts

    • Wire will be wrapped around spokes of rims

  • Shoulder bolts attaching rotor to motor

    • This may be impossible, bolts are very small. We should use Loctite for our own peace of mind even if an exception can be reached with ASC

  • Bolts attaching bearing cap to UCA bearing housing

    • Again, very small bolts

Tips

  • The bolts are very hard steel. It was established last term that the drill press is not sturdy enough and is prone to breaking drill bits. Use a manual mill instead.

 

NOTES:

2021-10-13: Find bolts corresponding to subassembly/part, collect them but keep them organized and arrange to have holes in the thread milled