Tech Tip: Organizing Bolts and Nuts During Repairs
 

Before starting the process of tearing apart my FD parts car, I wanted to come up with a way to keep track of all the nuts, bolts, clips, etc. that I was going to be removing so they could be easily identified for later use.

I started out using ZipLoc bags, but they were too large and too $$$ considering I'm doing the whole car. My wife suggested I look for some of the small poly-bags used by people who do/sell arts and crafts stuff like beads. After a few hours of searching the Internet (I'm cheap so I keep looking for the best price), I found my source -- www.veripack.com .

I selected the 3" x 5" 2 Mil White ID Recloseable Poly Bags, PN# 02-0305W. The cost was $8.10/1000 bags + S&H. I use a Sharpie permanent marker to write the name of the part the fasteners are associated with.

The 2 Mil are fairly thin. Not really meant for tossing around. If you want more durable bags, I recommend you go with the 4 mil (PN# 04-0305W).

Since they also Meet FDA/USDA specifications for direct food contact, I bought a case of the 4"x6" to use as sandwich bags. Much cheaper than ZipLoc's.

Richard

Oh come on. Be a man. Dump them all in a bucket and pray you don't have any bolts left over in the end :D LOL

:bigthumb: Seriously though, $8.10 for 1000 baggies is pretty good. Might even be a good idea to dump the baggies of that specific area into one baggie. Like having a Front End baggie or a rear end baggie.

I bow to the guys like TurboJeff and Donnie who probably have this stuff memorized with as many cars as they have done. I used to be that way when I worked on my 1973 Mazda RX-2 (and yes I'm one of the older guys on the forum). My friends and I could completely gut an RX-2 and put it back together without a manual, but things were much simpler then. :)

Hehe.

I believe ya. I had a 74 Formula I yanked the engine out of a few times. 2 block bolts, 1 tranny bolt, a few hoses here and there, and OUT she went. I think my record time for having the engine 1/2 way out of the car (not including jackup time, etc) was a little over 1/2 an hour! :D

Having the engine bay the size of a jacuzzi also helped out ;)

WAY TOO DANGEROUS! A mad wife could throw four or five extra bolts in there, or worse yet, some kind of electric blender part, and screw up the whole project. I'm sure I'd spend hours trying to remember where the egg beater looking thing went.

Bags are helpful another trick I use is that I reinstall nuts and bolts after I take the componet off. For example, remove the ABS sensor, put all 3 bolts back into the original locations. You can't do that everywhere but it is possible in many places.

The best trick of all is to have an example car sitting beside the car your reassembling, I cheat that way;).

no way dude, Use a big flat piece of cardboard, take a pen or something and punch little holes in it according to where the bolts are coming from. The bolts will fit really snug and if they have nuts you can tighten them on the other side. You can easily write little notes next to each bolt if you're really anal.

That's one reason why I ended up buying a parts car after I bought my runing FD. First of all, I didn't want to start messing with a good thing -- the running FD, second of all, I wanted a full scale model to use as a parts manual.
Richard

The cardboard is an idea I had not thought about. My problem is that the fasteners I am removing won't be going back on any time soon. They'll be part of my parts bin.

And what's anal about preferring to spend my time wrenching instead of looking for bolts? Its' one thing if all your going to do is pull a few parts like the UIM, TB, etc. Try dismantling an entire car and then remember when all the stuff goes after a few months of not touching it.

"Try dismantling an entire car and then remember when all the stuff goes after a few months of not touching it....."

:D I have 3 engines torn apart now. 1 13B and 2 DSM's I look like a friggin drug dealer with all the plastic i got goin on around here...

The cardboard also is a good idea but the bolts can fall out if they get moved often and you may not know it.

Also, my grandfather always had a spare "foldgers" can hanging around the garage;) But the little plastic is a good idea. Just make sure you use a mrker that won't fade or smear:D ask me how I know..:D

im currently in the same predicament.... but make that at least a year ago that i took it all apart. i do however have a "working model" :biggrin: to work from when im ready to reinstal everything so im not as worried. i put stuff in ziplock baggies etc. as to general location and mark that (if i cant thread it back on afterwards).... although i do have a "bolt bucket" with all sorts of unknown bolts from this car, and from 1/2 a JC cosmo that i disassembled... as well as another totaled rx7 that i helped someone strip for parts. its been a long time since ive seen where everything goes.... hopefully it wont be a problem to put old humpty dumpty back to gether again

PS disassembling a few cars definatly helps with remembering bolt placements. you start to recognize when/where mazda will use a particular bolt size, and what shape bolt/nut/screw/etc. i think succesfully pulling a car apart nad reassembling it is part organization, part practice, and part memory.

Shit thats how long it takes me to pull the engine in the 7 :redface:

and no im not kidding....

I'm planning on rebuilding my tranny soon. The plastic baggies are my plan - for every part I've made a cross-reference list that has the Mazda part number, page & part number for the disassembly diagram in the FSM, and page/part # for reassembly. If I were planning to do an engine I'd do the same thing. I'm going to label each bag with all of that information so I don't lose time digging through manuals and trying to figure out which washer is which.

But IME for most jobs, it's best to have a nice table or section of floor space to spread out all the parts as they come off, and either put the fasteners back where they were or just set them with their parts. It's overkill going beyond that for most jobs.

Dave

Yeah, but try that will an all-stock engine. Slightly different situation.

I've use the cheap plastic bags that come with the wire ties. I throw the nuts and bolts in there and tie the bag shut. I then use the wire tie to attach the bag to the part that the nuts or bolts go to. That way when I grab the part I already have all of it's hardware.

Definitely a lot of good suggestions on this thread.

I tend to do as turbojeff and replace the nuts and bolts back into the assembly whenever I can so that they don't wander off.

On jobs I'm unfamiliar with I also like to use zip ties that have "flags" on them on which you can write with a special marker. When I did my hose job I labled many hoses and nipples with them and when I pulled my motor I used them to label all the ecu connectors on the harness. As I installed each connector onto the new motor I just clipped the zip tie off. Very handy.

I started off my project carefully labeling everything in baggies or sorting them in bins (one of those big partitioned bin-thingies I got at sears for $8.00), but that quickly fell apart. I've got a big bucket-o-bolts (most of which are rusty), so I frequently draw from my well sorted and organized cache of new metric fasteners and replace everything I can. Almost all of the M6x1.0 low-stress stuff in the engine bay has been replaced with nice socket-cap SS. :)

I second the baggie idea. Every motor I've rebuilt, I've got a box of Ziploc 1-gallon bags that use the plastic slider to seal them up. That's way easier to seal when your hands are coated in grime :). And, a sharpie to label the parts.

On FC's before I learned the wiring harness/vacuum routing, I would take file folder labels and label electrical connections and vacuum lines. Only takes a little time, and makes it MUCH easier during re-assembly. I think you'd see a LOT less "just installed engine, car won't start, wtf?" threads if people spent a little extra time documenting and labelling.

Taking pictures also helps out a lot. You'd be surprised how much you can forget after a month or two!

BTW, the large Ziploc bags also work well for small components to keep them together, not just bolts. Also good storage for oily items, like front cover bearings, the oil strainer, etc. I usually get one of those Rubbermaid storage bins or something and load all the parts up and put the bin in the hatch of the car - helps with space.

Dale

I do pretty much everything mentioned here except for the cardboard. Big pieces get lined up along the garage wall in order of assembly with all bolts in place. Leftover bolts go into marked ziplock bags (big spender) and connectors get tagged.

If it's a job I've done a thousand times (like the intake pipes) I just chuck it anywhere.

BTW I've pulled a 13b-rew complete with gearbox in under 10 minutes using an angle grinder....

just buy a tackel box for fishing

ahhh being your digital camera along and try to snap as many pics as you can... that is always nice when trying to remember where stuff goes

DamonB,
Care to share where you get the zip ties with flags you use. I was thinking about using the type of ties they use on Christmas Trees. The ones that have prices or type of tree. I had not seen any of the ties with flags you mention while doing my searches.

dcfc3s,
I picked up a bunch of the RubberMaid storage bins at the local BigLots! store. They were much cheaper there than anywhere else, even Walmart.

broken93,
Also interested in where you get your SS fasteners. Living on the gulf coast where most anything metal things tend to corrode, I'd like to change out many of mine with SS.

dgeesaman,
That's some serious organizing. I planned to do something similar, but didn't want to admit it in the forum. Figured just the poly bag idea would get me flamed.

Richard

I buy mine at a local commercial electronics supply place. They look exactly like a normal zip tie but on one end there is a flag about 1/2" x 1" that you can write on with a special marker that is included.

McMasterCarr.com has them on catalog page 1340; 7568K11 $6.54 for 50 pieces. Mine were cheaper than that but look the same. See "H" below:

http://www.mcmaster.com/catalog/110/...l/7568kc1s.gif

Taking apart a tranny (not just a 5th synchro) is serious business. It's also made me much more familiar with what's inside. When I'm done I'll post my list on the forum and maybe do a writeup.

Dave

http://www.boltdepot.com

They've got just about everything, a good ordering system, and sometimes they throw M&M's in with your order (in a bag, of course).

Be aware that SS stuff is lower strength. I generally use them on low-stress components where they are visible, so I don't have ugly corrosion. It's generally cheaper than replacing them with new Mazda fasteners (the nickel plated ones). And, I have the added claim that you can't take apart my car without a nice collection of socket drivers :)

DamonB, I use those exact zip-ties to label cabling at work.