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Carrot failure @ Muline 27-Nov-2013 At 9:36:08 AM Tastrad

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After reading this thread I went to Hillwood yesterday to check on the carrot bolts that were placed in about 10 routes in 1997 in the first few months of development.

They were 5/8 (about 9.7mm) 316 stainless machine bolts hammered into a 9mm hole to a depth of 75mm with a fixed hanger. The rock is basalt. A shifter would not rotate the bolts at all. A hefty crowbar between the hanger and the rock would not budge it. No amount of bashing the shit out of it would loosen it. You would need some sort of extraction device or just a hacksaw to remove them.

There was one particularly ugly one I was worried about because I hadn't drilled the hole deep enough and it was protruding about 5mm and not flush against the hanger and the rock, and I'd mangled the head by smashing it with the hammer.
Once again it passed the crowbar/shifter test, but I placed a new bolt beside it anyway. In that rock, I'm convinced they are bombproof and there is no need to replace them. Yes its old technology and I haven't placed any carrots since 1997, but if they are solid, why go to the time and expense to replace them.
As someone said on the thread, its more or less a circular piton and people have been falling on rusty 30 year old pitons at Arapiles for years (Snowblind, and that 23 of Tempests in Yesterday gully - Lunatic?), and no-one is replacing those.

Same with a handful of expansion bolts at Hillwood that came loose and pulled out. I was shown one of the offending bolts and placed it in the kerb outside my house, and tried to pull it out with a car. The bolt didn't budge, but the climbing rope snapped. So any loose expansion bolts simply need to be tightened, and if tightening some bolts every 10 years is the price to pay for using that type of bolt then fine.

But Sliamese and others down here are talking about wholesale re-equipping of routes at Hillwood to bring them into line with modern practice. I think you'd be wasting your time and money Simon. If the bolt is solid then leave it alone.
The carrots at Hillwood are not time bombs about to fail and hurt someone, and neither are the expansion bolts. They have passed the Subaru test, the crowbar/shifter test and the bash the shit out of it test.
I think it should be approached on a bolt by bolt case - that if a suspect bolt is discovered, then replace it.