What's the purpose of Torx bolts?

[jwgary]

How about the offset cruciform drive? This looks like a phillips, but each side is skewed a little so the arms don't line up. They can handle lots more torque than a standard phillips. If course one screw costs about $2. 00 even in bulk quantities so things get a bit expensive. These are used on a lot of military applications where the strength has to be there. I guess they don't use a regular socket head or something like that because the need the shallow depth of a 100* countersink instead of the standard 82* and you can't get enough engagement with a socket head (Allen) or spline head (Torx).

 

[EEdmondson]

How about the lox screw? http://www.lox.com/Lox_v_Phillips.asp?Item=3

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

I've found that torx fasteners are FAR less likely to strip out than allen. I'm pretty sure they did it for ease of assembly - a powered driver is going to be less likely to strip one out on the assembly line. On the line it's all about getting the job done the quickest most efficient way possibly.

 

[WDixon27]

in 10 years of working on euro cars i like allens better then torx, maybe germans and swedes don't source decent torx bolts

 

[KWeber]

I'm a firm believer in Snap-on TORX bits.

You are wasting your time if you are using anything else.



Oh yeah.

#$%^&* TORX, anyways.

 

[jmeehan]

The all wheel drive ford tempo's used T-30 torx bolts on the outboard end of each rear half shaft. The inboard end used the the same size bolt, only with an 8mm head. The parts counter only stocked the T-30 bolt. So after breaking a few torx bits, and stripping the torx bolt heads, you had to put the same crap back in.

These cars used u-joints in the rear half shafts, I got to replace a few of them in my previous career.

Sometimes I think cars are designed by mechanical engineer dropouts. #@$%!