could not agree more on that one..

They will be fine to reuse 99% of the time. However, people have had failures of these bolts. Root cause of failure we may never know, could be improper torque, corrosion, etc.

Technically, anytime you torque, loosen, re-torque a bolt there is metal fatigue and stretch which adds up over time and weakens the part. That's why the official recommendation is to replace these anytime the LBJ is removed.

I've never seen any official Toyota recommendation on the need to change these bolts. If they had to be changed, they would be marked with a diamond on the attached diagram. They are not. Do you have a contrary source other than paranoid posters?

Toyota doesn't even spec threadlocker for these. If they did, it WOULD be non-reusable as Toyota only uses one-time pre-applied microcapsule threadlocker.

http://tacoma.site40.net/4Runner_96-.../flbj/comp.pdf

Lol, come up to a salty state or Canada. These bolts are ****ing shit.
They are way too soft and they round like butter.
Never have I seen a worse bolt than the one in my brother's tacoma's lbj.
My friend bought a 4runner last year and went to remove his lbj a few weeks ago. PO glued the busted bolt head into the hole. Somehow, someone broke the bolt in half so it's stuck inside the knuckle.

Must be that. I have done a few LBJ swaps and bolts were all fine.

I did not replace my LBJ bolts either. Mine were still perfectly fine and the FSM did not say they had to be replaced.

Just for shits and grins the other week, I grabbed my torque wrench to make sure they were still tight to spec, they were.

I did not use locktite either on them for what its worth.

My bad, it appears you are right.

That being said, these are still a critical bolt and for piece of mind I would not fault anyone for replacing these. I'm guilty of reusing these anytime I'm pulling the LBJs off (eg. To get at the CV joint), but I will make a judgement call in replacing these if I see they are in poor condition.

Well so far nobody has offered a convincing or even-unconvincing reason I can't use these bolts.

I will be the first to admit I am paranoid about some things like when it comes to the safety of my wife and 3 kids. If I were 20 and single I wouldn't give two shits about these bolts. But I'm not...

As for reusing them, last time I wasn't as aware of how critical these LBJs were and I can't recall for sure what bolts I used last time. I honestly don't remember if I reused the old bolts along with some new ones or not. So I'm not taking chances with them. I didn't have to replace the LBJs either but I wanted to because the peace of mind is worth more than the money or time to install them.

So for me it makes sense to replace the little bolts that keep my wheel on at 70 mph. Especially since the bolts have been shown to sheer off. $10 is cheap insurance in my oppinion.

(Also not implying that those who aren't paranoid or didn't replace the bolts — don't care about their wife and kids... Hahaha am just confirming I am in-fact a paranoid weirdo)

The toyota oem lbjs come with a new castle nut and cotter pin.

I suspect strongly if toyo felt the need to replace the 4 bolts also they would have included them along with the new castle nut. What say gents, make sense (aside from the rust belt, damaged ones)? But yeah cheap enough for the retentives among us to just go ahead and replace.

I bought 'em along with the oem LBJ's and plan on replacing all of them just for peace of mind. 90080-10066 were the ones I bought.

Your logic is sound but I'm not sure Toyota intended these trucks to outlive the LBJs. If they had, the LBJs would be on a maintence schedual for replacement like other parts I would think. But like you mentioned, the bolts are cheap enough to just replace if it matters to people.

I know this is all splitting hairs, but that's what forums are for in my opinion; sitting around talking shop about the nuances of this part or that part or the benefits of this mod or that mod. Learning basically.

Every day/week/month/year I'm on T4R and other online forums, you slowly realize it's the same information repeated 100 million different ways and times

Paranoid, single, without kids weirdo checking in. I guess that owners like you and I approach maintenance on a vehicle a little differently than others. I just feel that it only makes sense to replace these bolts because of the critical role they play in holding the front wheels to the hub.


I wish I could answer your question, but I am as confused on you on this. I ended up getting the 90080-10066 bolts with loctite and calling it a day. 7,000 miles later, no problems whatsoever from them. They're still threaded tight.

So I am installing the bolt/washers in my 02' currently. Is there definite answer whether I should go with the 37 ft/lbs or 59 ft/lbs?

59 ft-lbf is correct. When you look at the size of the bolt and the part it's holding onto the rig, 37 ft-lbf is way too light. The FSM makes mistakes. You can't just blindly follow it without using some common sense. The worst mistake I've seen so far is telling people to tighten the small 3rd member nuts to 50-something ft-lbf when the correct spec is 18 ft-lbf. If people followed that spec, they'd be stripping a whole lot of nuts and studs.