Oil plug torque spec: 2010+ Mazda 2.5l.

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I'm trying to find the oil plug torque spec for my Mazda5; there's nothing in the owner's manual and web support on this vehicle is lacking.

That said, I suspect that all Mazda 2.5l oil pans are the same, so I was wondering if any of you Mazda6 and CX-7 owners might know the torque number?

Thanks for any help.

M_C
 
Just put it on snug enough to still be able to get it off... It is usually something like 30 ft lbs.
 
do they use a crush washer or gasket?

Ford rubber gasket type is usually 15-20
metal crush washer type ~~30

I usually dont torque mine.. i get it finger tight then a good pull with my smallest ratchet (4" 1/4 drive)

I am used to it and its not too tight.

Back in the day I did ruin the 18$ drain plug on my focus by overtightening.. the rubber gasket was very different than the metal crush washers I was used to... only ruined 1 though :p 20$/lesson ouch.
 
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I get mine on hand tight and then use a 3/8" ratchet and turn it about one more turn or so. It's usually really easy for first half turn with the ratch and then the second half snugs it down. I don't really think about it though. I'm really good at knowing when something is tight enough. I generally find that torque specs seem to have things tighter then they really need to be sometimes.
 
Originally Posted By: motor_oil_madman
I'm really good at knowing when something is tight enough. I generally find that torque specs seem to have things tighter then they really need to be sometimes.


My Word, this is wrong on top of wrong. The only thing most humans can "know" is that loose feeling of doom when you know you have stripped something. And this rule of thumb on torquing things like axle nuts, wheel lugs and the like could easily leave a person dead. No offense, but torque specs matter and your thought that your feel is magical is deluded, wrong and very, very dangerous. You don't know what you don't know. Cool truck, though.
 
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Have you ever replaced your spark plugs? If so, that torque is enough for the oil drain plug. Logically would you agree with me that the drain plug has lot less severe duty than the spark plugs? Most spark plugs are spec'd about 15-25 ft-lb of torque.
 
Originally Posted By: Vikas
Have you ever replaced your spark plugs? If so, that torque is enough for the oil drain plug. Logically would you agree with me that the drain plug has lot less severe duty than the spark plugs? Most spark plugs are spec'd about 15-25 ft-lb of torque.


Not all thought. My Acura plugs require only 13 lb ft of torque, while the drain bolt gets 28. And the stakes are high for getting these wrong!
 
Originally Posted By: TomYoung


My Word, this is wrong on top of wrong. The only thing most humans can "know" is that loose feeling of doom when you know you have stripped something. ... No offense, but torque specs matter and your thought that your feel is magical is deluded, wrong and very, very dangerous.


Pretty much everything you've said has been demonstrated to be false. Here's the % of error from various measurement methods:

Torque control with hand wrench - 30%
Small air torque tool - 35%
Click type torque wrench - 60-80%
Turn of nut - 15%
Load indicating washers - 15%
Strain gaged bolts - 1%
Air powered impact wrench - 100-150%
Bolt stretch - 3-15%
Ultrasonic - 1-10%
Operator feel - 35%

Here's the source document if you're really interested: LINK

Originally Posted By: TomYoung
You don't know what you don't know.


The true irony in this statement is that if you actually believe that a torque wrench gives you a particularly good idea of joint tension, then I'd suggest these exact words apply to you. Friction torque is a very poor proxy for joint tension, which is what really matters. It's used because it's easily standardized and is generally "good enough".

Most people don't realize that often times drain plug torque spec's are given for dry fasteners, or that the thickness and material of the drain plug washer can alter the nut factor considerably. For a drain plug, I'll stick with "tight enough".
 
The spec is somewhere around 29-32 ft*lbs on my wife's Mazda3, which has the 2.3 from the same engine family as your 2.5. I use 30 ft*lbs with a beam type torque wrench.
 
Originally Posted By: TomYoung
Originally Posted By: motor_oil_madman
I'm really good at knowing when something is tight enough. I generally find that torque specs seem to have things tighter then they really need to be sometimes.


My Word, this is wrong on top of wrong. The only thing most humans can "know" is that loose feeling of doom when you know you have stripped something. And this rule of thumb on torquing things like axle nuts, wheel lugs and the like could easily leave a person dead. No offense, but torque specs matter and your thought that your feel is magical is deluded, wrong and very, very dangerous. You don't know what you don't know. Cool truck, though.


"no offense" but your post was very condescending and wrong.

--Cheers.
 
Originally Posted By: mailman74
Per amsoil site 22 to 30 ft pounds.

Originally Posted By: rationull
The spec is somewhere around 29-32 ft*lbs on my wife's Mazda3, which has the 2.3 from the same engine family as your 2.5. I use 30 ft*lbs with a beam type torque wrench.


Thanks guys (including everyone else); I had guessed ~25lbs and torqued to that, so I suppose I'm okay.

BTW Rationull: Have you found one particular Mazda3 forum better than the others, and if so, which one is it? The Mazda5 is a sort of an orphan and the only forum I visit is very lean on content.
 
Originally Posted By: Mustang_Cougar

BTW Rationull: Have you found one particular Mazda3 forum better than the others, and if so, which one is it? The Mazda5 is a sort of an orphan and the only forum I visit is very lean on content.


Eh... I've lurked and posted on mazda3forums.com a little bit and it's been pretty good. I've had mixed luck on model specific forums in the past. My theory is the older the car the better the forum. Not that there isn't good content, but it's been hit and miss. I haven't spent as much random time on Mazda forums b/c ours is my wife's car so I don't get as much time obsessing over it
smile.gif


TBH I tend to stick to BITOG more often than not these days, regardless of the car.
 
No more guessing. My factory service manual states that the required "oil pan drain plug tighting torque is 23-30 ft/Lbs" and that is with a "new washer". I set my clicker torque wrench for 25. This for my 2007 2.5L CX7
 
What do you think will cause the plug to come off? What are the forces that are operating on it to make it lose?

The only way it will come off is if you barely finger tighten it. The only force which is operating on it is the engine vibration and repeated heating and cooling of the pan. Even the vibration forces are minimal because only the weight of the plug is contributing towards it. This is not fastener holding two parts together which have tendency to separate from each other.

There are ample examples of people using torque wrench and ruining the pan because they used wrong scale on the wrench.

But if you are really worried, get red thread locker and use a 1/2 3 feet breaker bar to tighten it :)

- Vikas
 
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Originally Posted By: JOD
Originally Posted By: TomYoung


My Word, this is wrong on top of wrong. The only thing most humans can "know" is that loose feeling of doom when you know you have stripped something. ... No offense, but torque specs matter and your thought that your feel is magical is deluded, wrong and very, very dangerous.


Pretty much everything you've said has been demonstrated to be false. Here's the % of error from various measurement methods:

Torque control with hand wrench - 30%
Small air torque tool - 35%
Click type torque wrench - 60-80%
Turn of nut - 15%
Load indicating washers - 15%
Strain gaged bolts - 1%
Air powered impact wrench - 100-150%
Bolt stretch - 3-15%
Ultrasonic - 1-10%
Operator feel - 35%

Here's the source document if you're really interested: LINK

Originally Posted By: TomYoung
You don't know what you don't know.


The true irony in this statement is that if you actually believe that a torque wrench gives you a particularly good idea of joint tension, then I'd suggest these exact words apply to you. Friction torque is a very poor proxy for joint tension, which is what really matters. It's used because it's easily standardized and is generally "good enough".

Most people don't realize that often times drain plug torque spec's are given for dry fasteners, or that the thickness and material of the drain plug washer can alter the nut factor considerably. For a drain plug, I'll stick with "tight enough".


Your link goes to the ASM catalog. I would be interested in seeing the actual document. The original post involved oil plugs and I would agree that in general, the seasoned wrench probably will not get into too much trouble using "feel." I also will agree that the question of torque is not a simple one and that bolt tension, which is not particularly easy to measure, is really the bogey. But in the real world, I would question what "feel" really means. Is my "feel" as accurate as yours? Does this vary from individual to individual. Is the assertion that you generally do better asking a person to "tighten this bolt to 50 lb ft" without a torque wrench? Do you want your engine rebuilder to operate this way? And what about getting the lug nuts adequately tight. I have been a passenger in a car where the front wheel came off because the lugs were too loose. And is the offender the "click" type torque wrench? If so, is the "Snap-On" in the same boat as the "Harbor Freight?"
 
Originally Posted By: TomYoung

Your link goes to the ASM catalog. I would be interested in seeing the actual document.


Sorry, here's a link to the book here. on Google books. You can preview a lot of it. This chart is pulled from 674, if it's available in the preview.

Originally Posted By: TomYoung
But in the real world, I would question what "feel" really means. Is my "feel" as accurate as yours? Does this vary from individual to individual. Is the assertion that you generally do better asking a person to "tighten this bolt to 50 lb ft" without a torque wrench? Do you want your engine rebuilder to operate this way? And what about getting the lug nuts adequately tight. I have been a passenger in a car where the front wheel came off because the lugs were too loose. And is the offender the "click" type torque wrench? If so, is the "Snap-On" in the same boat as the "Harbor Freight?"


To answer these question in order:

-it depends. There have been volumes of research on written on measuring the accuracy and repeatability of bolted joints, and 'operator feel' is determined differently depending on who's doing the measuring. Generally, it's an operator tightening to a specified friction torque specification with a regular wrench. You're right, there's a ton of variability. But the takeaway is that there's a ton of variability using a friction torque wrench as well. There's also not a clear advantage of an 'experienced operator' vs. an 'inexperienced operator'. The only real tread I've seen among the many studies is that experienced operators tend to over-tighten, inexperienced tend to under-tighten.

-the assertion is that telling someone to tighten a bolt to 50 ft lb and having them tighten a bolt with a clicker-type torque wrench to 50 lb will have roughly the same result

-I want my engine re-builder to use appropriate fasteners for the job, like load-indicating washers or TTY bolts where appropriate, since they're much more accurate. I also want him to use the angle-torque specifications for bolts where bolt tension is critical, since these specs are generally given for tension-critical joints.

-lug nut specs are generally 80-100 ft lb. There's so much wiggle room in the spec that the most likely reason a wheel will come off is that someone simply forgot to tighten the bolts! If you tighten them to "really effin' tight', which is my spec for lug nuts, you'll never have a wheel fall off... Forget about lug nuts though; when someone is installing a giant metal plate and 11 screws in my wrist, I want them using something more accurate than a torque wrench! (don't worry, they do-they use a depth gauge).

-arguing about "Snap-On vs Harbor Freight" when it comes to clicker-type torque wrenches is analogous to talking about "which truck scale should be get to measure these feathers". Sure, the higher-quality torque wrench may have better accuracy, but the dominant source of error, by several orders of magnitude, is the measurement method itself, not the wrench. Some people like to fool themselves into thinking that if they buy a really expensive clicker torque wrench that they'll be able to tighten bolts with great accuracy, and that's simply not true.
 
There are enough bozos who use 1/2 inch clicker on 6mm headed bolt because the book had listed torque as "96".

They forgot to notice that "96" used a different font and in white on black lettering.

That implied the measurement was given in lb-inches!

Coming back to this thread, for general automotive, majority of mechanics will use the following rough scale ...

"tight enough" (about 20 ft-lb) 1/4 ratchet
"really tight" (about 50 ft-lb) 3/8 ratchet
"effin' tight" (about 90 ft-lb) 1/2 ratchet

To remove those fasteners use the next size ratchet / breaker bar. For example, use 3/8 ratchet to take off the oil plug but use 1/4 ratchet to put it back.

- Vikas
 
I like your chart, but you left off the following:

8 ft lb: not too tight!

While there are plenty of bozos who misread torque wrenches, there are also those who wipe down the threads, tighten the fastener with a trusty snap-on torque wrench, then feel the sickening feeling of things suddenly getting too loose...

This isn't the "fault" of the torque wrench, this is simply a mis-application of a fastener. Engineers are well-aware of the variability in torque measurement, so if they fail to build in a big enough safety net, this is the end result (M5 drain plugs and ZF pan bolts come to mind).

Bolt tension is incredibly variable using a torque wrench, the averages I posted don't even tell the whole story. That's with virgin fasteners, and it's an average, not a scatter plot. You can use a torque wrench properly and still have a bolt which is tightened or under-tightened by 200-400%. If the joint isn't tension critical though and the joint was properly-designed, it doesn't really matter. Most drain plugs fall into that category.
 
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