Good Guy Sram. This isnt something they probably needed to do but got in front of it.
I’m really confused. Here is part of the recall notice linked above
This leads me to believe the bolts in the aftermarket kits are different than the bolts sent to bike manufacturers. That doesn’t make sense to me.
If the bolts are the same, then my thoughts turn to the people assembling bikes at several LBS and simply say I wouldn’t let some of them touch my bike.
Maybe their corporate lawyers don’t think they’re liable if a shop is supposed to use their professional judgment to make sure they don’t let a bike out there with loose levers?
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That’s what I assumed. Hard to believe there are separate bolts for retail vs bike manufacturers.
Don’t know this for a fact, but I’m pretty confident it’s not different bolts. They’re assuming that a shop would notice that the levers weren’t secure and adjust accordingly.
Could be a different amount of loctite on the OEM vs aftermarket product, though. I could see how that could happen in production.
The way I understand it is that they are only recalling unsold aftermarket shift-brake levers. There is nothing wrong with the bolts themself, it has just been supplied to much threadlock which may interfere with proper fastening. This means that you could conclude that SRAM trusts all the employees at the LBS’, it’s the consumers they don’t trust and hence the recall of unsold units.
This also occasionally happens with disc rotor bolts and brake caliper mounting bolts with manufacturer applied thread lock. Using a torque wrench you’ll hit the set torque, but only because the thread lock is preventing smooth threading of the bolt. So if you didn’t notice this you’d have a bolt torqued to a lower spec than intended.