Incidentally it seems no longer possible to get the Saab seal protectors you've previously reco'd. I tried last year and they canceled my order and said "never gonna happen" (ok I'm paraphrasing)
I'm still gonna try for the OTC or KM variants
Who here uses a torque wrench on the cv axle nut?
- Thread starter daveatthebill
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Incidentally it seems no longer possible to get the Saab seal protectors you've previously reco'd. I tried last year and they canceled my order and said "never gonna happen" (ok I'm paraphrasing)
I'm still gonna try for the OTC or KM variants
Yeah it seems things are getting scarcer all the time. If you need one I have a couple of spares.
I do my own mechanical work and if the nut is torqued to, say 200# of torque, I will tighten it good and tight w/o a torque wrench. Honestly, I never thought about it as being that bad of a thing to do. Never had an issue doing it this way but I do see other people's viewpoints. FWIW I was an aircraft mechanic in the service and much stricter procedures were followed with torque specs for most everything. Been doing mechanical work for almost 50 years. This isn't the space shuttle, though.
any chance there was a torque stick in between the impact and the socket?
Did the front axles on my brothers 99 Suburban just before winter. Yes, I got out my torque wrench and made sure to torque them to proper spec. Doing anything else is just asking for major issues later down the road. Torque wrenches are not that expensive and necessary tool when working on many things.
I usually see pressed bearings torqued, hub assemblies impacted.
I'm probably guilty of the never-seize issue. Being a shade tree guy in NH makes me work on some rusty junk. And I've developed a love of never-seize that may not be entirely healthy.
For what its worth I learned that proper fastener torque is not just for NASA engineers a long time ago. I was young, invincible, and vastly smarter than everyone else ( I miss those days) and felt that the "tighter the better". I would routinely strip bolts. But it wasn't until installing ball joints in my 83 GMC did I realize that over-torque can really be bad. Tightening the top ball joint on the driver side to my usual standard of as-hard-as-I-can-pull with a 3ft cheater bar, I heard a loud pop, like a gun being fired. I didn't even know what that was. Looking around and not finding any bullet holes, I went back to tightening. The castle nut was loose. Hmm wonder why? Then I saw it, A crack all the way through the axle housing knuckle casting. Oh no.
So folks, good enough is not really good or enough.
And if you find torque wrenches to be useless, you might be the type of person who throws things into the back of a truck and says "it won't go anywhere". That is one "Oh No" away from disaster as well.
For what its worth I learned that proper fastener torque is not just for NASA engineers a long time ago. I was young, invincible, and vastly smarter than everyone else ( I miss those days) and felt that the "tighter the better". I would routinely strip bolts. But it wasn't until installing ball joints in my 83 GMC did I realize that over-torque can really be bad. Tightening the top ball joint on the driver side to my usual standard of as-hard-as-I-can-pull with a 3ft cheater bar, I heard a loud pop, like a gun being fired. I didn't even know what that was. Looking around and not finding any bullet holes, I went back to tightening. The castle nut was loose. Hmm wonder why? Then I saw it, A crack all the way through the axle housing knuckle casting. Oh no.
So folks, good enough is not really good or enough.
And if you find torque wrenches to be useless, you might be the type of person who throws things into the back of a truck and says "it won't go anywhere". That is one "Oh No" away from disaster as well.
ls1mike
$50 Site Donor 2025
Intakes, heads, axle nuts, certain other important items. Yes!
Kestas
Staff member
Even though the axial force tightening the axle nut goes through the seated raceways or orbital roll form, there is enough "squeeze" in the assembly where the wrong torque value can drastically change the bearing clearance..
This is a funny one. All he has to do is have all the tires on the ground, just like you would when tightening all the lug nuts, you know in park and the park brake applied, and maybe blocks as stoppers too. Then just torque them up. No help needed.
Makes me think of the auto engineers these days too.
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If you use your tools and torque wrench often enough, you can tell how many foot pounds of torque you are applying with a pretty close accuracy. I know my air impact gets to 90 foot pounds as it slows down but if I hold it a little longer, it will be 100 and if I hammer down with full air pressure it’ll hit 130. I verified this with a torque wrench a few times so I don’t need to use the torque wrench for everything. On this axle nut I would lay into it really hard and then once it’s on the ground, I’d give it another grunt with a breaker bar and call it good. In other words, I bet your mechanic knows his impact gun and the torque is probably really close to where it needs to be.
I came here to say similar.
For my car it’s tighten the bearing nut to 57.5lb, back it off to 0lb, retighten it to 10.5lb, insert the lock washer, and then install and tighten the lock nut to 65lb. No way I could do that properly without a torque wrench and the service manual.
My Sportwagen uses single use axle bolts that are torque to yield so x torque + y degrees. My guys always replaces them when doing work (on the invoice) so assume torqued as well...bolts have paint marks for that final y degrees. I generally use a torque wrench for everything I can use it for/get to with one. I get many techs ugga dugga bolts like this with a Milwaukee.
Not saying it is the correct way, it is just what I observe.
350-400 for one of mine. Use a scale and long breaker bar. Gets me close (I hope)
you can get it tight enough with your impact, but all that hammering can't be good for the bearing
The real pros know how many ugga-duggas it takes.
Years ago I have having some steering issues on my 2001 BMW 330Ci coupe. I changed the RF wheel bearing. The spec is something like 250ft/lbs. So, I used a breaker bar and measured X inches from the center of the socket. i then put my entire 170lbs weight on the bar at the point on the bat that was X inches from the center of the socket. We don't need no stinkin' torck rench!
Actually I will say the one time I didn't like the procedure was the 10.5 rear in my '11 SuperDuty.
It's been long enough I don't remember the values but I'm REALLY paranoid about (traditional) bearings being too tight because in my mind it's a self-perpetuating cycle: heat causes expansion, expansion causes more preload and more heat, more heat causes more expansion...and eventually you get friction welding
So, whatever the value was I halved it. There was still preload on the bearings, just less. That was 50k miles ago. Maybe I just got lucky. A sample of one proves nothing but I knew I couldn't sleep at night if I set them as tight as Ford said, and that's all that REALLY matters for me.
Not saying I was right. I'm saying we all make personal choices EVERY day. Some work out. Some don't.