i am done.
i filled the nuts with jbweld and tapped out M5x0.8.
i gobbed a little jbweld on the bolt and sanded to ~round. ran M5x0.8 die over.
seems to work great.
this ride is a beater to avoid driving my Ram 1500, so iam am not into pouring $ into if i dont have to
i really dig these forums, many thanks for the replies.
cliff