Under tray removal/reattachment: LocTite or not? Tips?

Why? Answer that first. Its a body fastener. Have you ever heard....ever in your life using locktite on a body fastener?

 

I have seen just as many underbody fasteners fused together as I have seen "gone missing". That's a bigger problem as when they fuse together often it will twist the captive t-nut out of the panel the undertray attaches to.

So - nothing is probably the best answer. It wouldn't hurt to clean both sides before reinstalling, though.

 

Loctite does make a very low strength threadlocker -- Loctite 222 (pinky purpleish) IIRC (if you're worried and still want easy removeability).

 

I have owned my 458 for ten years and have removed and reinstalled my under try at least once a year for service and have never found a lose fastener. Even if you to loose one or two; which seems impossible if you tighten them when you put things back together and besides there are a dozen more still holding the panel in place. I think you are over thinking this.

 

I remove several a week. On the panels I have installed no issues. On the others I find missing fasteners, junk hardware, stripped threads and pulled threaded inserts all requiring some level of repair. There is no magic bullet, only good work habits.

When you are doing it right and still having problems look for a fix. When there is nothing to fix (this case and most others) just do it Ferraris way.

Overthinking indeed.

 

Hey Brian,
Got a chuckle out of your missing fasterners….etc. You have seen a lot more than I have but I have seen enough to know what you are saying. You need me as a customer you would find all of my fasteners present and still the originals; no std. threads jammed into metric or bailing wire or duct tape etc.

 

Brian is correct. There is an incredible amount of garbage fasteners on undertrays. I don't understand it. How can you loose hardware from an undertray?
I had a client pay for all original bolts and washers for his 430 undertrays. He was an out of state customer and I didn't see the car for standard oil changes. It came back a year later and $600 worth of original hardware was gone. Not one bolt or washer left and it had been to the other shop twice. How? How do you loose that many bolts and washers? And no, none of them fell out. The tech just didn't put them back on and had to find junk to replace it. Baffles me.

Oh, don't use thread locker. Just tighten them, they will be fine. And use the thick Ferrari washers, the cheap thin replacements will bend and the tray will rattle.

 

Using thin standard washers Ferrari had issues with air pressure trying to suck the pan off at very high speeds. The very early production 360s the factory had us replace all the OE washers with the heavy gauge washers that became OE to prevent air pressure from trying tear the pan off. Correct washers are not just a matter of good workmanship, its a very real safety issue.

Another case of too many people working on cars they know nothing about and have no understanding of how important seemingly simple tasks are. If you ever had a belly ban come loose at speed it is a very eye opening experience and can be really dangerous. I had a passenger at the time and he really wanted out of that car.