Ti Bolts Into Mag Wheels

Get them NDT x-rayed

 

Ducati have been fitting Magnesium alloy wheels to bikes for 30 years and more, my V4 came with Magnesium alloy wheels as did the Panigale 1199 SL and I ran late 90s era Magnesium alloy wheels on my 853 track bike without any issue what so ever. I don’t and never have liked titanium fasteners so my experience is using SS although I suspect my V4 wheels have used bolts made from Ducati cheese to secure the discs as usual. There is a lot of mumbo jumbo in this thread, what is important is that the wheels have been passivated dipped and if Chizel uses an appropriate thread preparation as recommended by Nellie, everything will be fine. Andy

 

I think a periodic check at the obvious stress points would suffice. Baring any big impacts where would a crack propagate from. On the front probably round the brake fixing points. If it's a single sided rear it would be most likely around the drive pegs. These are areas without powder so can be crack checked. Even old fashioned red dye penetrant and developer in a can will find cracks there. If I found some for mine at the right price I would have them in a flash.

 

It's quite specialist. You know the guy and trust him so that's good enough. He puts his name to your safety so I would imagine he's good at what he does or he'd be called out very quickly.

 

Aren’t a lot of gearbox casings, particularly on aircraft engines, made with magnesium alloys, albeit well protected by surface coatings with a lot of reprotection options for minor on wing damage. IIRC Mg alloys also have good creep resistance and tensile strength benefits in addition to weight savings over Al alloys, which presumably outweigh the additional maintenance burden.

 

Don’t worry Chiz.
If he’s half decent like Steve at Tcps then he’ll crack test and do a dye penetration and if they're suspect he’ll just ring to tell you he’s put them through the bandsaw and you’re Not getting them back.

the process is to chromate first then that pacifies the substrate in order for further processes such as priming and powdercoating etc.

when done right the primer is also a specialist coating prior to finishing.

Of old, pure racing magnesium wheels would have a much higher content of mag than say a road mag wheel, and conversely was lifed for a season.

kenny Roberts used to gave a skip outside his building in banbury full of mag rims that had had their day!

in respect to your bolt conundrum- m8 ti bolts, you’ll be fine on a road bike. If you’re Rossi you may have some concerns from your race engineer!

the problem with 12.9 bolts is that when they get surface treated ie passivated et al, the side effect is they suffer from carbon embrittlement, so stay well clear unless untreated- and then you’ll cry because they’ll rust quicker than an oily black bolt.

your wheels will more than likely have an insert in them rather than a tapped hole into the mag.

But titanium fixings can be buggers so don’t go in dry.

If they do gaul, then drilling them out is hilarious fun. We used to use cobalt drill bits and it was happy to eat them like sweets.

 

Don’t go in dry? At his age he’s shooting talc

 

So I was shooting live rounds at 5 years old

 

Have a read of this,

http://www.finishlineusa.com/products/specialty-products/anti-seize-assembly-lubricant

 

Chiz - you're going to have to get a lot more creative with yer words to stop using the missing 'k' so much

 

My early '79 900SS Bevel came with Speedline magnesium wheels* as standard, they lasted about 18 months/just under 17,000 miles.
They had cracks radiating out from every disc bolt hole!
*Those original wheels were so bad that they banned Mag' wheels in Australia which was Ducati's largest overseas market at the time.
My 2nd set were Campagnolo which were the bees knees in GP racing at the time, they lasted around 2 years/another 20,000+ miles.
To be fair they were used in all weathers inc' winter salt etc.
After that I swore I'd never fit another pair of Mag' wheels, only relenting recently when I bought a pair of Marvic's for my 851/955, they were the last part of the jigsaw to see the bikes fully wet weight finally get down to 350lbs.
I figured that these days (I'm retired) that I'd probably never cover the sort of miles on it that I did all those years ago.

Steve R