3mm steel rod &c - in Reading?

[John Stumbles]

Truculent Teenager's model 'nitro' car is in bits on his bedroom floor again and we've found that the pivot pins for the suspension wishbones are bent. They're about 30mm long 3mm dia screws with a horrid little self-tapping thread at the head end and the rest is plain shaft. Option 1 is to keep on paying silly money for replacements from Apex Models (no doubt the replacements will suffer the same fate ...). Option 2 is to get a bit of 3mm dia steel, silver steel or even brass, cut it to length and fix it in place. Options for fixing it seem to be (a) threading the ends and loctite-ing or lock-nutting nuts on (presumably a 3mm rod will take an M3 thread?) or (b) finding a source of those fasteners that look like crinkly washers and push onto a shaft with tangs so they won't pull off (anyone know what they're called?)

I can get rod and dies from e.g. Folkstone Engineering Supplies

but does anyone know anywhere in Reading or environs? And any clue where to get those push-on clips?

[Tony Williams]

Exactly 30mm long? I have a few M3 hex tapped spacers, (the hex is 5mm A/F).

One spacer is 20mm long, threaded M3 all the way through. The other spacer is 10mm long, threaded female at one end, with an M3 male thread sticking out at the other.

They screw together to make a 30.3mm long spacer, with M3 female threads at each end.

I've found three sets. Email your snailmail if req'd.

[Andy Wade]

"Push-on retainers" seems to be the generic term these days - well that's what RS call them anyway (try stock no. 172-329). They also used to be known as Spire clips (as did many other kinds of spring clippy widgets).

[John Stumbles]

I don't think what you're offering would work: we need basically a bit of

3mm dia rod with some means of fastening something bigger to each end to keep it in place. Thanks anyhow.

[fred]

In article , John Stumbles writes

B&Q Warehouses (Paisley certainly) have started stocking small rod and other metal stock, don't know about the dies though.

[Tony Williams]

Ok. Note though that round bar is the worst to thread and use, because of the difficulty in gripping it.

[John Stumbles]

Er, so what section bar would you thread? :-)

[Tony Williams]

:) Now, now. Don't be sarky.

Threading can require a surprising amount of torque, so holding a round bar requires a decent 3-jaw chuck, or collet. The same problem occurs if trying to tighten up nuts on a round bar.

[John Stumbles]

ISTR having to back off and go sort of three steps forward two steps back last time I tried (which was (mumble) years ago)