Collateral Dave-age had two corroding 5-piece protection bolts that were plated steel mixed with stainless steel hangers. The second bolt was one such installation. Terrifyingly, the bolt snapped while unscrewing it! The failure occurred at the threads which is not really surprising as the threaded section ends up being the weakest part of the bolt and also contains the smallest diameter of metal.
The rap anchor was also replaced. The right-most bolt did not have very many threads engaged in the nut which is concerning given that the hanger is loose (ostensibly from repeated load-unload cycles). This could lead to the nut continuing to back off and possibly fall off. After doing a lot of research I decided to go with an in-line chain anchor configuration. Here in the US many might focus on the one rap ring as a point of concern. In short, in over 100 years steel rings have been used in climbing applications and there has been no failures. Even an unwelded ring holds a minimum of 6kn when loaded at the weakest plane. Even a crappy weld will yield approximately 25kn. Steel rap rings don’t fail. Single rap ring points are the norm in Europe with no accidents. The original configuration required a lot of hardware because the placements were about 14″ apart and the horizontal orientation relative to the 45° angle relative to the face makes equalizing trickier. An in-line chainset makes dealing with those factors easier.
