Definitely worth it in my opinion!! That $10 part ended up costing me $3500!! Not to mention having to rent a U-haul truck and trailer to drag it all the way home! I didn't mention that I was at work, 4 hours away when it happened. I also had to pay for a rent-a-car for a week and a half while I was at work. Wasn't able to make a trip all the way to the house for one of my other vehicles.
I replaced mine. For less than $10 at the time, why not?
That said, I don't believe it is all that risky to re-use one. They are not torque-to-yield like
head bolts. They are simply pre-coated with Toyota's version of threadlocker, and Toyota
specs all such bolts as non-reusable. If you clean it and apply new threadlocker, you should
be fine--as long as you torque to the 217 ft.lbs. spec.
A number of sources have posted that dealer service shops do not use new bolts, rather they
just renew the threadlocker.
[MENTION=10169]TheDurk[/MENTION] I was expecting multiple pictures from different angles of the OEM part. LOL
I did kinda want to see if they use red or blue threadlocker however...
I don't believe it is all that risky to re-use one. They are not torque-to-yield like
head bolts. They are simply pre-coated with Toyota's version of threadlocker, and Toyota
specs all such bolts as non-reusable. If you clean it and apply new threadlocker, you should
be fine--as long as you torque to the 217 ft.lbs. spec.
A number of sources have posted that dealer service shops do not use new bolts, rather they
just renew the threadlocker.
For the love of god, replace it!!! You don't want to go through what I did. The timing belt and water pump were replaced on my T4R a month before I bought it. I put several hundred miles on it, and then one day as I was turning out of an intersection...I had no power. I thought that perhaps I had broken the supercharger belt, as it was barely running. I pulled over and lifted the hood. After inspection, I noticed that the main crank pulley was out of whack. Well, after crawling underneath it, I realized what happened. The bolt backed out, and let the main crank pulley just ride on the edge of the crank. It filed down the woodruff key and over half of the groove that it sits in. I was faced with either tearing down the entire engine to replace the crank, or just replacing the engine. I ended up replacing the engine. Cost me around $3500 for the engine and labor. Even had a friends shop help me with the labor. I think the bolt is around $11. Toooootally worth the insurance. That bolt has to be torqued down to around 220 ft. lbs if I'm not mistaken.