Originally Posted By: Silverado12
Originally Posted By: Astro14
Originally Posted By: Silverado12
I would think it would make very little difference whether on the ground or not.
It makes a huge difference if your axle nut is preloading bearings or not. Generally, those kinds of set-ups have you torque to some very modest (15 in-lbs) amount to remove play in the bearing, then back off and go finger tight, or back to some other modest torque to get the proper bearing pre-load. If you do that with the wheel on the ground, you'll never get the pre-load correct, and you'll destroy those bearings in short order.
Now, if you're talking about a hub, in which you bolt the axle into the hub, well, yeah, who cares.
But the axle nut sets bearing pre-load on a lot of cars and on those, you absolutely must do it in the air.
I thought it was obvious he was talking about FWD or similar bearing torque.
I thought it was ambiguous...hence my answer... I've owned both kinds of cars, and it wasn't at all clear to me to which kind he was referring...