Tight ‘kin wheel bolts

[mtt.tr]

Last week I broke 3/4 ratchet 3/4breaker bar 1/2" breaker bar


Them wrestled the hub off for about 2hrs

This was on a truck mind

 

[premmington]

Last week I broke 3/4 ratchet 3/4breaker bar 1/2" breaker bar

I often break 1/2" breaker bars.

Never broke a 3/4 one - I got two Elora breaker bar heads - both have 30" handles I made up from bright mild steel round bar.

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[nickk]

That breaker bar is old school Britool! it didn’t break where I welded it,only on the swivel.The T bar is elora,a few of you aren’t looking closely.
So I’ll go back to fitting the bolts dry ,like I used to,the coppaslip was an experiment,thanks premmington.
Yes dapph I do the diagonal method,I too was taught it.

 

[My Old Landy]

The crank nut on my 90 is only 350Nm (around 260 ft lb) and I crack that off with a 1/2" drive - 3 foot breaker bar. Just how tight can you get a wheel nut on a car?

 

[PhillipM]

The crank nut on my 90 is only 350Nm (around 260 ft lb) and I crack that off with a 1/2" drive - 3 foot breaker bar. Just how tight can you get a wheel nut on a car?

Overtorque 'em, stretch the threads, they become a nightmare forever after.

 

[premmington]

That breaker bar is old school Britool! it didn’t break where I welded it,only on the swivel.The T bar is elora,a few of you aren’t looking closely.
So I’ll go back to fitting the bolts dry ,like I used to,the coppaslip was an experiment,thanks premmington.
Yes dapph I do the diagonal method,I too was taught it.

Torque setting it for a nice clean dry bolt with a torque wrench.

Not a super high torque impact gun and lubrication on a fine thread.

Bain of my life of life - getting wheels off cars.

 

[premmington]

The crank nut on my 90 is only 350Nm (around 260 ft lb) and I crack that off with a 1/2" drive - 3 foot breaker bar. Just how tight can you get a wheel nut on a car?

FT

 

[nickk]

If the bolts had stretched from over torquing,surely they wouldn’t screw in and out so easily,by hand and without slackness on the thread?

 

[mtt.tr]

I often break 1/2" breaker bars.

Never broke a 3/4 one - I got two Elora breaker bar heads - both have 30" handles I made up from bright mild steel round bar.

Elora 3/4" Drive Breaker Bar Head Only | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Elora 3/4" Drive Breaker Bar Head Only at the best online prices at eBay! Free delivery for many products.

www.ebay.co.uk

This was obscene bottle jack scaff bar.

On the plus side the kingpin was pretty easy to get out

 

[premmington]

I am sure it is:

Ferric covered bolts - heat - ABS bearing magnetism - water - salt - car wash wheel cleaning acid - dissimilar metals - chuck in some alkaline cat/dog wee. And you got the "full chemistry set"

Throw in high powered twin hammer battery guns - squashing into alloy wheels - the fear everybody has of the wheels coming off and getting sued.

 

[premmington]

If the bolts had stretched from over torquing,surely they wouldn’t screw in and out so easily,by hand and without slackness on the thread?

People don't screw them in by hand - it is ugg a dugga - they would not even know if the thread was bad and even if they did - they would just committ and beat the wheel fixing home!

 

[Old Dog]

If the bolts have been over tightened the male and female threads will have been deformed so the bolts might screw in by hand. If you ran a tap/die down them it would be surprising how much metal came off the threads. Clean up the hub and flange on the wheel and lightly grease(not copper slip) and lightly oil the bolts with engine oil and torque them up.

 

[premmington]

This was obscene bottle jack scaff bar.

On the plus side the kingpin was pretty easy to get out

I just bought myself a Facom 16mm punch with rubber handgaurd - to use with a 4lb lump hammer for beating into wheel nuts - to loosen them up a bit.

Facom 249.G16 16mm Parallel Pin (Drift) Punch with a comfort grip handle - PrimeTools

UK suppliers of professional hand & power tools.

www.primetools.co.uk

Bottle jack is far better than an axle stand - you can get it just where you want it - so you don't wring the socket off the nut.

Brutal attack.... Carnage!

 

[Moose McAlpine]

I just bought myself a 16mm punch with rubber handgaurd - to use with a 4lb lump hammer for beating into wheel nuts - to loosen them up a bit.

Air hammer.

The number of stuck wheel locks i've blasted off with mine, its paid for itself many times over.

 

[James1979]

Gently put an impact socket on the nut add a six inch extension & 12 " T bar , using an axle stand or jack to bring it level & parallel to the ground . Put on a three foot power bar & take up the strain to undo ( LH or RH Thread ? ) . Once you have a bit of pressure on , smartly hit the power bar about five to six inches up from the six inch extension with a long handled 2 pound engineers hammer and more often than not it will allow you to crack off the tightness of the nut .

During my apprentice days way back in the 1966 to 69 .. we had it hammered into our skulls that you should never ever lube or grease wheel nuts unless the manufactures recommends you do it , for the grease dries and can set like mortar with the road & brake dust .
Not even copper & silicone , High temp helicopter man made lubricant grease , or graphite was to be used .

The instructors for my apprenticeship had over 1200 years of experience between them , they were I often found out right and worth listening to .

I've often undone 2" AF nuts on Antar's , Dyson & Tasker tank transporter trailers doing just that when the drivers were using a officially supplied cranked four foot lever on a massive socket to tighten & undo the wheel nuts .
Wire brush the studs clean and wash the nuts out in petrol then let them completely dry off before putting them back on all nuts should be hand free tightness before you put the wheel on

Start the hand tightening at the top and once hand tight rotate that nut to the bottom so the wheel is pulled evenly onto the hub . Do this in cross diagonal selection till all nuts are hand tight and there is no slop between the wheel dish & the hub then use a torque wrench to tighten them up half a turn at a time again in cross diagonal selection . when are all tight lower th vehicle to sound ground ensure the brakes are on and finish the tightening in cross diagonal selection with a torque wrench .

I've had two dangerous air spanner monkey incidents on my MPV's with three of us traveling in it , all due to RAC and Kwikfit tyre monkeys not knowing how to put wheels on vehicles so things are 100 % safe. Both the MPV's had alloy rims and being over torqued at the first tightening point actually bent the rim or distorted the wheel nuts chamfered precisely angled seat , so that in about 120 miles once the rims had heated , expanded and sheared the studs or twisted even more.

On the last occasion ... ripping the dishes off the studs at 60 mph whilst I was towing a 27 foot caravan . Leaving the LHF front wheel only retained by a few turns of nut on a single stud before I could safely stop on the hard shoulder of the M6 . The job paper work off the RAC says you must check the tightness of the wheel nuts within 80 to 100 miles of them putting a wheel back on .. being 80 % disabled at 22.00 hrs. made that impossible but it was not pointed out to me nor was the docket marked that I'd been advised of such a thing.
I now have a decent Norbar torque wrench in the caravan always slackened off to zero so the spring is not compromised and an engraved white plastic tag showing the required torque setting for both car & caravan wheels and the cross diagonal method of tightening them. I'm now quite willing to call someone out at the stated mileage to check the tightness of the nuts tightened up by their poorly trained staff .

+1 for the lube, or lack of.

Truck nuts suffer that. Especially 8 wheelers, wallowing about in ****e all day. When it comes to getting them off even a 1” windy won’t touch them sometimes.

My induction heater always wins still working around a bad wrist after a 6’ pole jumped and cracked me when one of the nuts finally shifted on the last call out puncture I did. Bloody sore that were!!

Spoke about the torque things today funny enough. One guy blew his apart. Another guy has one and rates it. I think it’s a case of a £50 lucky dip of eBay and see if China got the metal mix right that day….

 

[DAPPH]

The "t" bar and the short extension are made by Cadbury`s, the breaker bar looks like the pin has walked, that's normally what breaks off a lug like that.

Bob

The so called breaker bar is in fact a half universal joint device called a " Swingle or nut spinner " it is simply meant to screw on ( or take off ) nuts using a socket to the point where putting them on you start to need a stronger T bar & extension prior to using a torque wrench to correctly finally tighten the nuts

 

[Dieselman 63]

Yep, that’s what I think. Remedy is to buy better tools. Over the years I have ‘spiralled’ nondescript 1/2” socket extensions, but never a Britool one, with a 300Nm torque wrench.

Probably not the same quality these days - all mine were bought back when Britool was Britool! I don’t use cheap sockets, either, if the job is demanding.

I cracked a 19mm Britool trying to undo a Subaru suspension component tightened to 200nm. Gutted! The search for a new one turned up two, so not all was lost. It’s the only Britool casualty I’ve had though, we were putting the old (1960s) gear through its paces last week on a fetid Citroen wreck and it came up smiling every time. Chrome peels, but the steel is good haha

 

[8ob]

The so called breaker bar is in fact a half universal joint device called a " Swingle or nut spinner "

If you google searched a "swingle" it would probably throw up a sexual deviant, breaker bar would get you what you want

Bob

 

[gt6s]

Air cooled VW studs can be a Mare. Nothing at all to do with over tightening. Granted that does not help.

 

[Munkul]

I am sure it is:

Ferric covered bolts - heat - ABS bearing magnetism - water - salt - car wash wheel cleaning acid - dissimilar metals - chuck in some alkaline cat/dog wee. And you got the "full chemistry set"

This. Nothing to do with tightness on some cars/wheels/nuts combos, they just get the mixture wrong and galvanic corrosion locks everything solid.
Yes it's a nightmare, and yes it keeps manufacturers busy making new 1/2" breaker bars