[DeTomaso] drilled bolts for brake calipers/safety wire pliers

[Thomas Borcich]

Jack you describe the process very well. If you have a drill press you are a few steps ahead. Get the drill guide. 
Be prepared, you will be swearing quite a bit when you break the drill when you are using a hand held drill with 
the very small drill bits. I found it much less frustrating to go with the next step larger drill just for the strength
and fewer broker drills. It's like throwing $5 & $10 bills in the fire place.#@%$....#@!^.  I also found it worthwhile to re-sharpen
dull and broken drills. If you can buy pre-drilled bolts like the ring gear bolts you will save a lot of time and frustration.
And definitely allen head bolts, (although harder material than grade 5) are far easier to drill, a lot less material to drill through.
Sometimes a piece of masking tape, or a hole punch/marking tool to give your bolt a small divit/dimple in the material stops
the drill from wandering all over the place. Go slow and easy until you get the hole started.

Boyd, I lost my really nice safety wire pliers a few years ago, if you plan on doing a lot of safety wire buy good pliers $50-100
they are well worth the money. I bought the large pliers from Harbor Freight and returned two sets(chinese junk)...the small
plier they sell is a pretty decent plier and gets in small areas...I found the big plier very cumbersome and hard to 
work with due to a bad latching mechanism and the twisting mechanism broke. We have three karts that need a lot of 
wiring...once you get the hang of it, it's fun to see the result and you will start looking for parts to safety wire.

Regards,



Tom