Be careful about using the Indy tool on Ventures, they made it so the stem will crack and often shatter at the angle necessary to secure the nut on there. You can get away with it or if you go slowly and are very careful like I am.
They specifically made the Indy tool to be incompatible with Ventures to try to hedge them out of the market. I think that it’s A) evil and B) dumb. Don’t make the consumer pay for your dwindling sales, especially with those sharp slivers of plastic that can get everywhere when that shaft shatters. My friend had to take his cat to the emergency vet because it ate one of those slivers and did some damage to its esophagus (it’s ok now though). And it’s dumb because people are just going to think Indy makes poor tools. They are not poor quality, they are just bobbytrapped. That’s the key point I’m trying to make here.
If you have a lathe or a cut-off wheel or something like that, you can actually notch out the shaft where it would make contact with the Venture hanger. I would not recommend this to the weekend hobbyist sect because there is far less margin for error than it appears.
[Tip: If you’re going to try this, heat that thing up a little bit! I microwaved it 2 seconds at a time for a total of 12 seconds (3 second cool-down). 5x6=30 seconds total.]
Now if you are working with 7/8” bolts, that’s going to change the equation entirely. At sea level, the density of the metal compared with the average atmospheric pressure is going to make that shorter bolt a bit more brittle than your standard 1 incher. “Well what does this mean for me?” you ask. Well, that’s a tough question to answer. First off, do you have a plumb bob? If yes, skip the next paragraph. If no, continue reading.
You’ll want to figure out some way of independently (no pun intended! Lol) verifying the true center of that bolt. Manufacturers specs are shockingly inaccurate, as I have found variances of 3, even 4 microns on either side of true center. The easiest way I have found to verify this without a plumb bob or electron microscope is using the earth’s natural magnetic field, when adjusted for the tilting axis and slight wobble we experience while rotating, the bolt will tend to gravitate towards true north as long as you have two equally-powerful magnets equidistant and the bolt is dropped face-down between them.
Good, now that we know true center, we need to simply repeat this 7 more times for each of the bolts. This should take no less than an hour provided you’ve got your system down and are taking accurate notes (which you should be. Otherwise you might as well just let the guy at CCS put your board together for you, pleb).
Another key mistake I see a lot of people make is just turning the bolt or the nut right on there. Hahahaha. Fools! Filthy, unwashed masses and their simple ways. You need to turn the nut or the bolt backwards one turn for every two full turns. This should be obvious, but if you need me to spell it out for you, this will dissipate some of that heat generated from the friction caused from those threads rubbing together. As you turn, those threads are actually getting hotter than the surface of the sun for a brief nanosecond (this is why I tend to wear a welding helmet while assembling my skateboard). Turning the bolt back the OTHER way will reverse some of that heat, actually bringing the threads dangerously close to absolute-zero in the process. This hot/cold/hot/cold will ensure the threads do not get misshapen while also hardening the metal at the same time. Your bolts will be able to survive a nuclear blast if done correctly. (I actually have a fallout shelter built exclusively out of my old hardened hardware. If any of u pals need a spot to wait out the nuclear holocaust, come on over, give the “double knock-pause-single knock” signal, give the secret passcode (“Shalom”) and you’re in! Mi casa su casa.)
If anyone has any questions, feel free to PM and I can walk you through any of these steps.