Bugger...

i think that is what i will do, ive done some poking around and decided on m10x1.5, i hope the course thread will be stronger. and its also an easy hole size of 8.5mm. some are weird sizes that i dont have......

I've gone and bought an M10x1.5 tap (taper & bottoming), with a handle. Cost £24.



The new bolt holes need to be drilled out to 8.5mm and then tapped. The difficult bit will be drilling out the mount brackets, they are made from pretty strong stuff.......

Done it. the new threads have been cut, on one side............



This is where it goes wrong....



That is an m8 bolt with a helicoil stuck on the end, and attached to the nearside mount



That is the other three boltholes with helicoils in them.



That is the 8.5mm drill needed to bore a hole for the m10x1.5 thread. As you can see the hole is too big and it means I can't use m10s this side.

However my idea is to buy the helicoil kit ( :silly: ) to repair m10x1.5 threads, it looks like it requires a hole of around 10.5mm, which is about what the damaged m8 helicoil hole is at.

hopefully this will work, and i'll only need to use m10 bolts.....

atleast I know the helicoils are strong. whoever did the helicoils originaly did them before I had the SJ, which I bought in 2003. Thats 8 years of 4x4 abuse, and it only broke because I pulled it to bits.