If you run a tap through them they are ruined.
These are meant to be hard to turn / tight.
Designed this way so they do bot loosen up later
Don
The bolts are not tight because they needed locking into place they are tight because the were the early tapered type self tapping bolts and Ford did not want to pay for taping the holes off line.
Putting new bolts in that have the full thread and not rusted like the ones coming out gives you much better fastening and taping the taping plates will not make the bolts come loose.
We were a supplier to Ford for Mustang, Ranger P.U., F-150, Lincoln Town Car, Grand Marquis, Chrown Vic., Tarus, Sable, Econoline, Aerostar, Lincoln Mark, T-Bird, Cougar, heavy truck and some I have missed. They would use taping plates where the torque was not critical and did not want to pay for taping the hole or adding a weld nut, pierce nut or cage nut. Things like seat belt reinforcements or what we called soap dishes got weld nuts so that the torque was always in control. Cage nuts were used when there was one nut that you could not reach with a wrench, inside frame rails etc., to put a nut on and gives us so much heart ache when they spin in the cage. In newer vehicles we added the nuts in the stamping die, called pierce nuts. I had one progressive die that ran a left and right and put 4 nuts in at 70 spm, strokes per minute. The nuts could be individual fed from bowls or on a continuous wire fed off a reel.
The hoods do not fall off or come loose and the trunks do not come off and they have a special nut cage for the trunk and just fender nuts for the hood. The door required so many bolts because it was heavy and you had to keep the hinge from slipping it is not going to fall off or come loose. The hinge bolts are tight because they were tapered to self tap and they are rusty.
I consider tapping the holes adding stainless fasteners and never seize helping the next guy in 20 years when he has to take it apart and repair the bushings. You can put the rusty bolts back in the rusty distorted holes in the taping plates and the door will not fall of either and the judges will love you. Everyone has a different opinion. Ford like everyone else does it as cheap as they can it is pennies per weld nut or tapped hole or pierce nut but there are lots of them so the pennies pile up.
BMW was one manufacturer that would not use self threading bolts they had to have either a weld nut or pierce nut weld stud or pierce stud for every fastener. They were afraid of stripping out the self tapping and not having a repair procedure for it.
Have you taken a bed off a new Ford pickup? You are probably either going to strip the torx drive bolt, break the driver or break a head off. Wreck yards us hot wrench a lot. They are tri lobe self tappers and when I take them off I put never seize on when going back. One of my older cars has had never seize, stainless bolts and tapped holes for over 20 years and did not come loose. I guess being a tool and die maker and tooling engineer makes me have a different view. Most things are not as critical as people perceive them out to be.
Just my opinion everyone will do what they feel is best.
David
