Fixing carriage bolt holes in a metal CP?

mhkohne

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I've got a metal control panel (my neo-geo woodgrain 2 slot cab) and I just realized that some of the carriage bolt holes are rusted and the bolts are spinning. I can get the bolts out one way or another (ahh, Dremel), but then what? How do I go about fixing something like this short of getting a new CP (not likely).

I can get rid of the rust and paint it black easy enough, but how do I square up these bolt holes again?
 
I've got a metal control panel (my neo-geo woodgrain 2 slot cab) and I just realized that some of the carriage bolt holes are rusted and the bolts are spinning. I can get the bolts out one way or another (ahh, Dremel), but then what? How do I go about fixing something like this short of getting a new CP (not likely).

I can get rid of the rust and paint it black easy enough, but how do I square up these bolt holes again?

I wouldnt bother squaring them up. While the square portion of a carriage bolt is great for tightening them, I find they usually can be tightened with just pressure. Once they clamp down they tend not to spin.

If you do square them up, you are going to have to use bigger carriage bolts.
 
He is right they usually cinch right up but if you want the squares back do a search for square washers you could get them tacked in place or maybe some j-b weld.

kabat$094854837%28s%29.jpg
 
OK, that was interesting.

I did get the old ones out the other day (pliers and penetrating oil FTW). I sanded and painted the CP, and was just tonight going through the bolts to identify what I needed at the hardware store so that I could put the whole thing back together in the next day or so.

Several things became apparent: My CP didn't have rusty carriage bolt holes. The holes are nice and square. The reason that the bolt spun in the hole originally was that the BOLT was rusty.

That seemed odd (a little rust shouldn't be enough to have a carriage bolt spinning!), so I looked a bit more and finally figured out that the carriage bolts in my control panel are NOT the right size! They are too small, thus a small amount of rust allows them to spin. Fascinatingly they all match (#10-24 5/8 carriage bolts with flat washers, star washers and nuts on every one).

The bolts that were in there were #10, and it looks like the hole is big enough for a 1/4" carriage bolt. I'd love to know how those got to be wrong, but I guess I'll never know.

Thanks guys!
 
He is right they usually cinch right up but if you want the squares back do a search for square washers you could get them tacked in place or maybe some j-b weld.

kabat$094854837%28s%29.jpg

Fascinating. I've realized I have a bolt problem, not a hole problem, but I'm keeping that in the back of my head for future use.
 
Congrats!

Could be the game was / had a kit and that is just the hardware they wound up with LOL :dontknow:

The bolts that were in there were #10, and it looks like the hole is big enough for a 1/4" carriage bolt. I'd love to know how those got to be wrong, but I guess I'll never know.

Thanks guys!
 
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