Quote from: ChrissyRyan on October 14, 2025, 07:40:39 PMAre these fasteners of the required stress specs?  Some cheapo bolts cannot carry the load.
But perhaps you do not need tank strength!

Yes, I got the specs from the dealership parts department. They could order them for me at $8.42 per bolt. I looked online and could get them for $4.42 per bolt. The home improvement guy helped me find what I needed. The specs only call for 20 ft/lbs of torque, so they will work. As @davina61 can tell you, 20 ft./lbs of torque equals two clicks of your elbow while tightening.

😄

Sometimes you want low hardness bolts that will bend rather than break under the stress.

Sometimes it is a mistake to replace a cheap bolt with an expensive bolt that is harder and more brittle.  A brittle bolt is more likely to break.

Quote from: Maid Marion on October 14, 2025, 08:35:01 PMSometimes you want low hardness bolts that will bend rather than break under the stress.

Sometimes it is a mistake to replace a cheap bolt with an expensive bolt that is harder and more brittle.  A brittle bolt is more likely to break.

Thanks, MM. That makes sense. The specs called for stainless steel, but I think that was to prevent them from rusting since they are on the bottom of the vehicle.

The issue with stainless steel is galling when both the nuts and bolts are both stainless.
You won't be able to get them apart!  They become cold welded together!
Best solution is to use different materials for the nuts and bolts.  Or use an anti-seize compound,.

Quote from: Maid Marion on October 14, 2025, 08:42:14 PMThe issue with stainless steel is galling when both the nuts and bolts are both stainless.
You won't be able to get them apart!  They become cold welded together!
Best solution is to use different materials for the nuts and bolts.  Or use an anti-seize compound,.

In this case, it is just the bolts. They screw up into the undercarriage. The alignment studs are black, so I don't know what metal they are, but they have washers and nuts to hold them from wobbling side to side.

Lori,


I knew you would need just the bolts because clearly you are not nuts.

With off-road driving, you certainly want the bolts to be strong enough and tight to handle all the bounces.  Perhaps on pothole ridden public streets too!


Chrissy

Quote from: ChrissyRyan on October 14, 2025, 09:02:15 PMLori,


I knew you would need just the bolts because clearly you are not nuts.

With off-road driving, you certainly want the bolts to be strong enough and tight to handle all the bounces.  Perhaps on pothole ridden public streets too!


Chrissy

These are "performance" rock rails. They serve as a small step to climb up into the Jeep, much like a running board would. They protect the area below the doors from rocks, gravel, and potholes, as you said.

Being performance rails, they are very heavy-duty for when four-wheeling over boulders. As the front wheel goes over the boulder, the Jeep could come down on it between the doors. This rail spreads the weight of the vehicle out along its length so no damage is done.

The rail can hold the entire weight of the vehicle if needed, like if there were boulders on each side and the front wheels rolled over them, leaving you in a high-centered situation. This allows the Jeep to slide over rocks, preventing getting stuck.

Sometimes, rock rails are called rock sliders for this reason.

I used stainless fasteners on the Countryman but in low stress areas like wing (fender) and other stuff. Allen heads as well just to "bling" it up a bit. Stainless has a different strength rating to normal bolts, 8.8 is used on most metric but it goes up to 10.5 for suspension stuff (I think thats right of the top of my head) for normal hex head bolts.

Today I had no deliveries coming, so I spent the day processing the black sand sample.

I screened everything through all of my screens, so everything was the same size.
The Golden Rule: When everything is the same size, gold rules.

That just means that gold will be the heaviest mineral in that sample. Otherwise, you could have a bigger rock that is the same weight as a small piece of gold in the sample. To make it easier to separate, classify everything to the same size, then pan each size separately.

I panned out the 1/8", 1/12", and 1/20" with no signs of gold.

The material that was caught in the next screen below, which is #50 mesh, or 1/50" in size, is like fine beach sand. That sample had no gold.

Most of the material was caught in the #100 mesh screen, so the particle size is 1/100th", which is what we call Fly Poop.

Not all black sand is magnetic, but a large portion of it is. This is magnetite, which is a crystallized form of iron oxide (rust). For any chemistry nerds out there, the chemical formula is Fe₂+Fe₃+2 O₄ and is one of the main sources of iron ore. Sometimes, pieces of magnetite become naturally magnetized within rock or soil. Natural magnets are called lodestone.

Another component of black sand is Hematite. It, too, is an iron ore called ferric oxide with the chemical formula Fe₂O₃. Even though it is iron, it is not magnetic, but it is an electrical conductor like iron.  The crystal structure is also different from magnetite.

This sample had so much magnetite in it, it was almost 50% of the sample. I tried to do it the easy way and just sluice it, but the magnetite just clogged up the riffles. So I dried it out and used magnetic separation.

In the left tub is the magnetics I pulled out of the material, and the right tub is what was left.



By removing 50% of the junk, running the rest through a sluice was much easier. However, there was no gold in it. So I put the black sand under the stereoscope and looked at it at 20x and 40x. Lots of magnetite crystals, but no gold. I tried to take a picture through the scope, but my camera mount isn't cooperating.

The final step is to process everything that fell through the #100 mesh screen, which is smaller than 1/100" and resembles vacuum cleaner dust. Because it is dusty, I will have to process it wet. Fine gold of this size can float if it is dry.

The trick is to add a couple of drops of Jet-Dry or soap. These contain surfactants that break down the surface tension of the water, basically making water "wetter". It allows water molecules to get into places that they normally cannot. If you dump it in a fish tank, the tank seals will leak, and the fish will drown because their gills cannot work properly.

The problem with soap is sudsing. Air bubbles defeat the purpose of preventing gold from floating. If you don't have Jet-Dry but have a front-loading wash machine, you can use a drop or two of the HE laundry detergent. It has low sudsing action.

So my next step will be to wash the dirt in water with Jet-Dry so the light dust will wash away and leave the heavy stuff on the bottom. Then dry it out, use a magnet to separate, and then pan out what is left. There may be tiny gold dust particles in it, but usually, if that is the case, there would be some small sign of slightly larger gold in one of the upper screens. So I am not hopeful.

The only solution is to go get some good dirt to play with!
That will be happening soon.

Lori, that is so cool.  The only thing close to gold panning near me is using a beach sand rake to find anything lost by the beachgoers.  Your way is way more productive.

Quote from: Emma1017 on Today at 07:28:27 AMLori, that is so cool.  The only thing close to gold panning near me is using a beach sand rake to find anything lost by the beachgoers.  Your way is way more productive.

Many prospectors pan the black sand from the beaches along the Great Lakes. Mike Pung, the inventor of the Gold Cube, designed it for this purpose. He was in Michigan, and the black sand is plentiful due to all of the old shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. The Gold Cube is designed to separate gold from the black sand. It works, but not as well as I had hoped, on massive amounts of black sand. The best way is to use a magnet to get it out of your way, then run the rest through the Gold Cube.

Who knew sand laundry was so fascinating?

The extent of my knowledge is knowing that Hematite is derived from the ancient Greek meaning "blood-red stone", and is in part due to the ancient Greek word for "blood". As in Haemoglobin. Both corruptions of the original spelling, Haima.