<VV> Fuel Leak / lug nuts

[Joel McGregor]

My truck calls for 450-500 ft lbs of torque.  My arms aren't calibrated for that so I carry a torque wrench on my truck.  It takes pretty much all my weight on a 5' to get them there.  As I'm typing that I realized that is way off.  A 5' bar should get them close to 1000 ft-lbs.  I guess my digital wrench is way off.  I hope I'm not ruining my studs.  No problems so far.  I set it at 450 with anti-seize.
Joel McGregor


________________________________________
From: Hugo Miller [Hugo at aruncoaches.co.uk]
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2018 11:48 AM
To: Joel McGregor; virtualvairs at corvair.org
Subject: Re: <VV> Fuel Leak / lug nuts

And of course some people think that if they do the nuts up tight enough
they won't come off. They then stretch the stud beyond its elastic limit as
you lose most of the 'spring' force that keeps it all together. That's if
they haven't stretched the threads first.
I have never used a torque wrench on wheel nuts on my buses - I do them up
by feel - they don't need to be too tight if all faces are clean and the
threads are not stiff. I never check them, and I've never had a problem
ever. The plus side of using lube on the threads is that you can get them
apart again.
Another sort of related comment - I notice that coarse (UNC) threads are
widely used on American vehicles. In the UK we used to use BSF (British
Standard Fine) and Whitworth (which co-incidentally has the same pitch as
UNC). Then we went over to UNF threads, with UNC only being used on the
bottom of studs or in aluminium. Now of course everything is metric, which I
hate. It is an artificial system imposed by Napoleon on the countries he
conquered - every measurement is supposed to be a tiny fraction of the
circumference (or maybe diameter?) of the Earth. (Of course, if it is a
fraction of the circumference, it cannot also be a fraction of the
diameter!). Traditional measurements, on the other hand, are based on the
human body. The decimal system is divisible only by 2 and 5, whereas the
traditional 'duodecimal' system divides by 2,3,4 and 6.  Plus the fact that
centimetres are not included in the S.I. metric system, so you get
measurements given in hundreds of millimetres. If I told you I was 5' 10"
tall, you would know immediately what that looked like. If I told you I was
1.778 metres you wouldn't have a clue.
Ok, rant over ;)