Rubber Dog Bone Latches

commofreq · Jul 13, 2018

So, I installed some brand spanking new hood latches last night, and when I came out this morning, this is what they looked like:

What did I do wrong? This is for an '89 6.2L - is there another size for the 6.5L HMMWVs? Is there some kind of a "trick" to these that I just didn't know about?

86humv · Jul 13, 2018

The metal looks used, did you just change the rubber ?
E bay items ?

commofreq · Jul 13, 2018

86humv said:
The metal looks used, did you just change the rubber ?
E bay items ?

Yeah, I only changed out the rubber - the rest is the original latch. I can't remember exactly where I got them from, but I don't think it was an ebay item.

Edit: I got them from Big Mike.

Action · Jul 13, 2018

To me, it looks like the straps are crooked. (Misaligned hood). That could cause more tension on one side of the strap?

Milcommoguy · Jul 13, 2018

To me, it looks like the straps are cooked. Rotten, dried up and not rubber-ie / pliable. No stretch and snap. Don't know if there are look alike parts sold as hmmwv parts.

The darn dawg ate them,

CAM

commofreq · Jul 13, 2018

Action said:
To me, it looks like the straps are crooked. (Misaligned hood). That could cause more tension on one side of the strap?

The hood is sitting pretty straight and flush. . . plus the top part of one strap broke, and the bottom part of the other broke. They were really tight to latch, but I kind of expected that, given that they were new. The rubber was somewhat stiff, but still bendable.

I really don't want to chalk it up to crappy parts just yet. I feel like this is somehow my fault. I don't really know why - it's just a hunch.

Edit: I got new ones in the mail, and I think I'm just going to throw some spacers under the latch to close the distance a little. After a few months, I'll just remove them.

diluted · Jul 13, 2018

commofreq said:
The hood is sitting pretty straight and flush. . . plus the top part of one strap broke, and the bottom part of the other broke. They were really tight to latch, but I kind of expected that, given that they were new. The rubber was somewhat stiff, but still bendable.

I really don't want to chalk it up to crappy parts just yet. I feel like this is somehow my fault. I don't really know why - it's just a hunch.

Edit: I got new ones in the mail, and I think I'm just going to throw some spacers under the latch to close the distance a little. After a few months, I'll just remove them.

Is it possible that the holes in those rubber dog bones were slightly under sized compared to what the steel pins were? Maybe driving them in caused them to stretch / rip and then the tension did the rest.

commofreq · Jul 13, 2018

diluted said:
Is it possible that the holes in those rubber dog bones were slightly under sized compared to what the steel pins were? Maybe driving them in caused them to stretch / rip and then the tension did the rest.

Those rips are both where the pins are. Good catch! It was definitely a chore both driving out the pins from the old ones and into the new ones. Maybe the pins themselves are oversized. I wasn't gentle either - the rubber was so hard and thick that I didn't really feel the need to be. That, and I couldn't be, because those pins just wouldn't play nice.

Action · Jul 13, 2018

They probably tore by the pins, because the rubber is thinner there. in your second pic, the upper and lower brackets do not line up...

porkysplace · Jul 13, 2018

commofreq said:
Those rips are both where the pins are. Good catch! It was definitely a chore both driving out the pins from the old ones and into the new ones. Maybe the pins themselves are oversized. I wasn't gentle either - the rubber was so hard and thick that I didn't really feel the need to be. That, and I couldn't be, because those pins just wouldn't play nice.

Did you put any soap on the pins to help them slide through ?

commofreq · Jul 14, 2018

Negative. Will be doing that when the next set gets here.

Guantanamo George · Jul 18, 2018

Don`t forget that there are a lot of Chinese copies of these rubbers for sale on Ebay. If you ended up with these then I`m not suprised this happened.

dilvoy · Jul 18, 2018

Guantanamo George said:
Don`t forget that there are a lot of Chinese copies of these rubbers for sale on Ebay. If you ended up with these then I`m not suprised this happened.

That's right George. Most likely a surplus "Dog Bone" would be wrapped in the type of plastic bag the Military likes and would have a label like in the photo. Maybe if a large pallet of these were purchased for a large rebuild contract, they could all have been placed into a large pallet sized box without individual wrappers, but that would be the exception.

commofreq · Jul 22, 2018

dilvoy said:
That's right George. Most likely a surplus "Dog Bone" would be wrapped in the type of plastic bag the Military likes and would have a label like in the photo. Maybe if a large pallet of these were purchased for a large rebuild contract, they could all have been placed into a large pallet sized box without individual wrappers, but that would be the exception.

The new set is in - Yeah, these didn't come from eBay, but they also didn't fit that packaging description either. No label with NSN on it or anything - just the yellow mailing "bag" with the two rubbers sitting in the bottom. I've got them installed now. It's pretty warm outside, so I'm hoping the heat will soften them up a little. On the last install, I latched them at night (it was down to 51F last night), so they had no time to get softened up.

If I get the same result, I'll be asking you guys if you know where I can get some real ones. . .

Rubber Dog Bone Latches

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