Ultimate geek toy: Titanium lug bolts, any sources?

While I can't think of any metallurgical consequences for ceramic or titanium lug bolts, I can't imagine the differential between the receiving media and the bolt material in flex and hardness is advantageous since the connection between the two is threaded and the threads don't provide infinite range for movement...

Busy saving weight in the weirdest places, are we?

Cameron

I'm not sure where you get that from but I don't think ceramic would be a good material for a bolt. A bolt is supposed to stretch and it's supposed to be resilient. Ceramic is hard but it doesn't have the greatest tensile strength and it would tend to crack when sideloaded.

Titanium on the other hand would probably be a great material for bolts cost no object. In the real world, steel is fine.

Judging from the price of TI bike parts, I'd say TI lugs would be $200+ a piece! 8^)

CraigB

it's probably a ceramic coating on the part as opposed to the actual construction of the bolt. Saw one once and it looked different but is is possible just the "head" of the bolt was coated with something?

Looked cool, coating, main material, whatever... but a completely different place (bolts) from where most people would spend the $.

Cameron

There have be aluminum lug-nuts on Porsches for the past 35 years. Lug bolts on the otherhand are a different story. Titanium streches twice as much as steel in general or you need to torque those babys down a heck of alot more to get the same clamping pressure as steel. Anyways, since you asked:

Stick em up Inc.
3942L Valley Ave.
Pleasanton, CA 94566
(925) 426-1040
www.stickemup.com
e-mail: stickemup@trivalley.com

The size you might need: M12 X 88mm w/30mm thread length.

Price: $43.97 retail x 20 = $879.40

This is for a standard hex head type bolt. You would need the proper shape at the base of you fastener, so custom machine work would be involved.

Material cost:
6ft length of 1.0in dia. stock is $487.00 Then there is the machine cost, I'm guessing around $75.00 a fastener.

My recomendation is to buy a lighter wheel/tire combo to reduce rotational mass. It would be cheeper,IMHO.

Allan

A ceramic coating on the threads might actually be pretty cool. It could be the ultimate anti-seize.