Hot Rods Torque wrench

I never used to. But a few years back when getting tires for my truck I was talking to the service manager he mentioned the importance of putting proper torque on newer vehicle alloy wheels. I figure I not doing them every day, why not use a TW.

 

I'm with ekimneirbo - never put a torque wrench on a lug nut.

But then again I come from the "tighten it up until it snaps then back it off half a turn" school

... now where's my cheater bar....

Cheers,
Harv

 

Son is sending the car into our mechanic that inspects the car and get the oil changed and inspected next week and will see what he says. He has been changing tires over since car was new but son lost his job so we did it to save him a few bucks. First time doing his car so am flying blind on this. Our mechanic is very fussy so we will get the straight skinny on it next week. Going to check them on Sunday to be safe after our big snow storm heading our way tonight.

 

Calibrated wrist is ok for old steel rims, WFO is correct, new vehicles with 18" +, aluminum rims should always be torqued, many are 130 lbs. ft. Or more. We torque every wheel, and many times recheck after road-test before customer picks up vehicle.

 

If torque was even, I’d bet they’ll all be the same. I bought my truck in ‘03 and never knew about the need for the “proper torque “. Like others, snugged them on, snuck up on them with an impact and then for the final listened to my impact gun. I’m sure they were not within 1% of each other.
But after the talk with the SM I thought to myself “well, why not”?
As I mentioned before, it’s not like I’m doing it multiple times a day on several vehicles. I can afford the extra 5 minutes to get the TW out and put it away

 

I've frittered away many an hour on the 'webs' checking out a vast variety of wheels for some fairly high-performance cars, and I've noticed that occasionally there will be wheels that specify their OWN torque spec. This has caused me to think..... Hey, wait a minute. Does this mean that every wheel could have its own torque spec? .......because they are a malleable alloy and each design is cast with different thickness and mass around the lug areas?? That seems like a variable factor from one wheel to another resulting in each wheel deforming uniquely.
Or...... Do I just keep my head down, wear blinders, and don't think about stuff like that and mount wheels one-size-fits-all and don't sweat the details because that's the way Mr. Goodyear did it?
Speaking of wheels, sometimes they turn so much, they keep me awake at night.

 

I've been torqueing my wheels ever since I distorted the center of a Wheel Vintiques smoothy a few years ago. Man, things things are fragile!

Gary

 

I think my ancient Sturtevant beam indicating torque wrench will last forever and it is easy to keep calibrated too; just a quick tweak of indicator to zero does it.

 

Ive use my perfectly calibrated torque wrist on everything I assemble.

 

I torque EVERY lug nut I install, as a matter of fact, it’s our shop policy. There is a recall on wheel studs for 3500, 4500, and 5500 series trucks about stud breakage and lug nut torque. If you do not properly torque these lug nuts the wheel studs WILL break off while driving. We have repaired many cases of these. The manufacturer has a special gauge to check stud stretch. I had to pull teeth to get one. At one point each dealer was only allowed to order and sell 4 studs per week. So, yes, we ABSOLUTELY torque every lug nut. Image the legal ramifications of “they are tight enough” on cross examination.

 

bought my Snap-On unit in 1970, Still works great.

 

I'm gonna throw this out there as an aside, watch out for th goons with the new mega-torque impact wrenches. I put rear brakes on my friend's Volvo VNL a couple years back, and someone had somehow tightened the majority of the lug nuts to the point that it took 150 pound me, jumping on a 5 foot long pipe, stuck over a 4 to 1 torque multiplier to get them loose. We'll call it well over 2000 lbs/ft to break them loose, and none of the threads were galled at all. I wouldn't have believed it had it not happened to me, imagine having a flat somewhere outside Podunkville, Wyoming with it. Back to the torque wrench topic....

 

A big selling point for me to buy the Williams one I bought is it's made in USA.

Gary

 

Makes me cringe when I watch a tech use a rattle gun set on "kill". It's even more fun when they use that same gun to remove nuts from left-hand thread wheel studs.

Cheers,
Harv

 

I think that's a question on the "are you a hot rodder" test. If you answer yes, you fail.

 

Well be a hotrodder and discount using a TW on your betters half’s modern driver with alloy wheels. I’m sure being a hotrodder you know more than the folks that designed the stuff.

But let’s be fair here. The OP was asking about a TW. Then later on said what he needed for and why. Read back through the responses, and draw your own conclusions.

 

I torque every critical fastener in any vehicle. I also am lucky to have a torque wrench tester at work to check them regularly.

 

some of you have clearly never considered the risk of over-torque, just as dangerous as under-torquing.

I always cringe when you go past the tyre shop and its all dugga dugga woo woo, THEN they go around with a torque wrench clicka, clicka, clicka, clicka for each wheel!!

All with the car balanced on four trolley jacks

Always hand tight with a 1/2" ratchet in a cross pattern for me, then torqued after.

 

I had to buy a 3/4 inch drive torque wrench that went up to 600 ft/lbs, in my business! It was necessary for torquing the hubs on my lawn mowers, of all things! I still have it…but never use it any more!






Bones

 

When you are dealing with large industrial trucks, I admit its a different ballgame. There are liability concerns and the stresses are much greater as well as larger studs and nuts often being used. Yes, if I was torquing lug nuts on a semi, I would want to know what they were. Had an old Ford single axle dump truck years ago. Needed to remove a rear wheel and it would not come loose. Impact had no impact on loosening the nuts. Got a strong arm and a 4' piece of pipe. Still could not get them to move. I was afraid I was just going to snap the studs off if I continued. Wheels were still on the truck when I sold it.

As far as the average 1/2 ton truck or car, never had a problem with just the old TFAR method..........other than trying to get some nuts off that people had impacted in place. One thing people have to consider is that torque wrenches may be incorrect if they get used a lot and don't get recalibrated every year or so. I scrapped a lot of torque wrenches in my last job before I retired. They do go bad.

I would venture to say that probably 90+ percent of car and 1/2 ton truck wheels changed in America never saw a torque wrench. Has anybody ever screwed up doing it that way.....Yes.......but no matter how its done some people will find a way to do it wrong.

 

As for the importance of torquing wheel lug nuts, no better example than the farm trucks I see minus left rear wheels sitting on side of road come fall and spring at winter tire change time ... had a very large one pop off and roll down highway (+60 mph) directly in front of my car before it, and lucky for me, tore off over ditch, through fence and into field last spring in a matter of seconds ... why always seems to be the left rear is a mystery to me but a little unnerving? And oh ya, wheels speed up when they launch, same as unhitched trailers, but that is another whole thread on importance of trailer safety chains, and using proper ball size to match your hitch haha!....

 

I use a torque wrench on my lugs & have torqued lugs on passenger busses policy was a boss would watch you do it before the bus left. have never torqued semi lug bud wheels just 1" impact have torqued Daytons. always torqued bearings and jam nuts for hubs

 

Never used a TW on my dads trucks either. Would be awkward and pretty difficult for the outer wheel and having to use a long extension. I guess the inner would be easy enough. But that would still be 40 times per axle (other than the steering-just 20 ) of torquing.
3/4 impact to set them, 1 inch to finish them off

 

Growing up on the ranch , here in Oklahoma,we had trucks that had the 5 hole Buds, 6 hole Buds and ten hole Bud wheels! We used manual tools to fix flats! I not sure how tight we got them, but I can remember using 3/4 inch drive stuff with blocks set up to support the end of the breaker bar and having an eight foot cheater to break them loose…..but I also didn’t weigh what I do now! Lol






Bones

 

The last place I worked, they went from torquing NOTHING to torquing EVERYTHING. It got out of hand actually. We had "engineers" publish torque tables, you had to be a shit-house lawyer to understand some of it. Finally we started listing torque values on engineering drawings on some programs, Oz has spoken.

I came up with a good torque formula and bounced it off one stress engineer, he liked it but was gun shy to have it published for general use.

Then every torque had to be witnessed by an inspector and signed off on a traveler. That created a bottleneck on some product lines. In our old business sector, we qualified the operators and they signed off on their own work. Common sense was no longer that common in later years.

 

I think its good that you are interested in safety and learning how to do things correctly......and asking questions. Like most things in life, manufacturers have to post specs and be concerned about liabilities. There are people who will put lugs on and only snug them......there are always some. Most people who have ever changed a few tires have also fought to get overtightened lugs off a car.

 

https://www.hemmings.com/stories/20...ust-need-a-vise-a-weight-and-some-simple-math

I just got this on one of my news feeds. I thought that calibrating the wrench at 10 lbs wasn't very representative of torque you would normally use, but maybe a 50lb weight would give you fairly good results.

Phil

 

First shop I worked at my boss had me look up torque specs for everything I touched . Wheels , drain plugs , tranny pans , etc etc EVERYTHING!!!

when I asked him why was I wasting my time when him and the other tech simply tightened stuff . ( lug nut on aluminum wheels got torqued and also critical parts all got torqued)

anyways his answer was to show me that most parts ( wheels included) where not torqued to what we would “ think” is tight .

I’ve had factory torque specs on wheels as low as 65 ftlbs .


I’ve seen wheels damaged by over torquing , all sorts of parts damaged by over torquing .

Jaguar , rolls Royce and Aston marten some specialty wheels could be in excess of 10,000 bucks per wheel


Like I said , actually look at the service manual for your car , most stuff is not tightened down right tight . But “ snug” relative to the size of the fasteners.

 

I have a “ torque multiplier “ it torques 3x on output or what you put on the input side

 

I know a guy who taught auto mechanics. He did not know what a torque multiplier was !