Vintage HiFi Audio Forum

Audio Discussion => Equipment Reviews => Topic started by: OldiesButGoodies on September 15, 2012, 09:11:41 AM

Title: Review - Hurricane Bolts
Post by: OldiesButGoodies on September 15, 2012, 09:11:41 AM
I purchased a bag of 50 of the following hurricane bolts from PartsExpress:

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?partnumber=081-1082&utm_source=Bazaarvoiceps (http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?partnumber=081-1082&utm_source=Bazaarvoiceps)

The experience was poor. The 10-32 thread was poorly done on the flute end. Multiple 10-32 bolts from two different vendors had trouble threading into them, which was painful when I still tried to use them with a speaker that has a tough to remove woofer basket routers in place. On installation one of them threaded in, then locked, and the short flutes were unable to hold so it spun (without too much force by the way), resulting in a complicated two hour operation to remove the nut from the back. I could have tap-and-die'd each of the 8 nuts to fix the manufacturing issue, but the short flute problem began to worry me, since the whole point of this is to be able to torque the basket to to the baffle. Quality is just not there. I am returning them today (not that I will get any back since shipping approximates cost - but it is the principle of the thing.

I then went to the hardware store and reverted to T-nuts for this upgrade,  which have the same effect per the tip F1 shared.  Those baskets are now married solidly to the baffle.

I believe my experience was probably a one-off related to a manufacturing defect, and everything would have gone fine if the threads were not an issue.  That said,  I would still steer away from these ones and get any ones with heftier flutes (or just get the T-nuts). 

OBG