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That depends wether you're applying a pulling force on it or just a sideways force and how big of an issue it's going to be if and when it comes loose. Temperature swings affect metal and brick differently so the hole might start crumbling around the rod after some years and it might come loose. It'll definitely never be as tight as it is now.
This might come a bit too late but why didn't you just get threaded rod and use one of these instead?
I could not pull it out with my hands after tapping it in. But to be clear, there’s only a sheer force to deal with, and it’s light.
I cut a bicycle axle bolt in half, and embedded it in the brick so there is a bicycle sprocket on the wall. Then a chain wraps another sprocket, which turns a shaft that goes all the way though the wall to the other side, where it connects to a right-angle gearbox, which attaches to a water valve. It’s lightweight overall… just the weight of a sprocket, chain, and a small decorative wood thing out of wood to serve as a handle.
This might come a bit too late but why didn’t you just get threaded rod and use one of these instead?
I did not know anchors like that existed for machine bolts. That’s good to know! However, it would not have helped in this situation. The bicycle axle has non-standard threading (~9mm bolt with a thread pitch that’s 2 steps away from the norm). Since it had a special nut that interfaced to ball bearings, I could not bring in a standard bolt or threaded rod. And the threaded portion of the axle was short enough that no threads could have gone into the wall. I could have added threads to the bare portion, but my die set skips the ø=9mm size.
I was asking more for future reference -- whether or not I should ever repeat this. And I think you answered that. Even if I get lucky in the future on getting a perfect fit at that moment, temp changes could blow it. I guess I’ll assume anchors (chemical and mechanical) are designed to handle the temp changes.
Mechanical anchors handle in my experience pretty much everything. I like the plastic ones from Fischer. And they make them for pretty much any application you could wish for.
I’ve had metal anchors in my walls that corroded over time. I’m not sure if corrosion causes expansion, but all those bricks split. That would be my only worry.
That’s good to know. I would hope a metal anchor to reshape when temp causes expansion. It’s a shame to hear it’s the brick that’s forced to expand. In my case it’s a solid metal rod, so it sounds like the metal is guaranteed to split the brick in a temp change.
It sounds like I have to pull out the shank, bore the hole to 10mm, and either use chemical anchor or fasten it using a sheet metal w/2 nuts.