Ingenuity +1 ; stupidity -100

[Alex]

Ingenuity +1
After spending a while figuring out how the heck I was going to torque the inner control arm bolts (and almost throwing out my shoulder trying to wedge myself and a breaker bar down there) I figured out I only needed about 3 1/2ft of extension and a piece of wood to balance it :thumbsup:

Stupidity -100
I spent a little while researching balljoint torques. Seems OEM M12 balljoints are anywhere from 45 to 60ft-lbs (usually locking nuts though; e.g., porsche). Hmmm, I wondered what my ball joints were in at (I usually just wrenched on them a bit, then lined up the cotter pin hole), so get out hte torque wrench...

30ftlbs - check
40ftlbs - check
50ftlbs - check
55 - little bit of a turn
60 - little bit more of a turn, hole is almosttttt lined up
65 - almoooo.....hey, why is the castle nut spinning on itself? crap crap crap, out we go for inspection and..........out comes the pickle fork :cry:

please let it be a standard gm or similar ball joint, and not some super fancy $500 one :worried:

I know, I know, it takes a very special person to successfully rip off 3 rows of threads on a balljoint (they're not damaged, they're just gone); however, I'd like to point out something - clearly, this is not my fault....honest!!! :laugh:

 

[Allen English]

OUCH!

 

[Alex]

OUCH!

FS - 1 0mile SLC LCA balljoint. Personalized by the infamous efnfast. You know you want to buy it ... it has 0 miles on it, what could possibly be wrong with it :laugh:

 

[Paul Osborn]

I like the 'frowny face' in the photo. Nice touch.

 

[Mark]

This is an interesting thread subject for a spanner noob like me. I have only so far test bolted everything together on my P4.

Now that I am close to bolting stuff together properly, is there a table of recommended torque values for general car related items, such as ball joints, wishbone mountings with spherical bearings etc etc???

TIA

 

[Dave]

Alex, I believe you are simply overthinking this whole torque thing regarding the suspension. Tighten them, mark them with paint and be done with it or if it makes you feel better, drill and safety wire them after tightening. How tight you ask? Tight but not too tight...just the way I like them

 

[Jack]

Alex, I agree with Dave's post. Don't over-torque things. When in doubt, safety wire and Locktite are your friends..

 

[Alex]

Alex, I believe you are simply overthinking this whole torque thing regarding the suspension. Tighten them, mark them with paint and be done with it or if it makes you feel better, drill and safety wire them after tightening. How tight you ask? Tight but not too tight...just the way I like them

Haha. But the problem with that though is the perception of tightness, hence my love for torque specs.

With my 1/2'' tq wrench, i can hit 240ft-lbs without much effort.....most people need to throw everything they have into it to hit that much torque. So to tell me tight, but not too tight, means I might end up hitting 200+ on everything, lol, THEN i'd have problems =)


Still don't understand really how it happened - hardened steel, soft castle nut, how do you completely strip 3 threads with that combination? The last negative balljoint experience I had was with my cobra, when i tried torquing the tie rod balljoint to 100ft-lbs (didn't have a spec for it, so I figured tie rods are ball joints, ball joints are on UCA/LCAs, UCA/LCA are 100ft-lbs, soooooo.......). At about 70ft-lbs it seized up and we spent 2hrs removing it. When it was finally off, the nut was finished, threads on the bj were damaged, but not stripped; probably could have been re-died it (not that I'd waste my time doing that with it).

 

[Dave]

With my 1/2'' tq wrench, i can hit 240ft-lbs without much effort.....most people need to throw everything they have into it to hit that much torque. So to tell me tight, but not too tight, means I might end up hitting 200+ on everything, lol, THEN i'd have problems =)

Use a smaller wrench.

 

[Brian Kissel]

A fellow I used to work with came up with this explanation ::

Tight is tight

Too tight is broke

It looks like you just experienced the "too tight" rule !!

 

[Alex]

Use a smaller wrench.

yeaaaaa, but there's no fun in that =)

Heck, I found a 36'' breaker bar in the store (mine is like 18'' I think) so I bought it; longer is always better :laugh:

A fellow I used to work with came up with this explanation ::

Tight is tight

Too tight is broke

It looks like you just experienced the "too tight" rule !!

yea, but the problem with that rule, is what happens if you have either a defective part, or it was boxed with the wrong items (e.g., a 1.5 thread pitch instead of a proper 1.25 thread pitch) ..... then if you apply too much torque something bad will happen....in which case, rule fails

It turns out its a standard OEM part (yaaaaay for Fran's decision to use standardized parts where he could), so live and learn.

Still, it's interesting because I showed it to several people today to get an idea if they could tell what happened, and nobody could really say. Most shared my thoughts - a hardened steel stud (essentially) should not have 3 threads stripped off by a soft castle nut at only 60ftlbs. Yea, if I sat on it with my 36'' breaker bar, then yea, but that wasn't the case. Oh well, just one of the things that leaves you scratching your head as you're putting together your rolling-jigsaw-puzzle-on-wheels

 

[Randy V]

Hi Alex,

Like some of the others here - I suspect that you're over-thinking this torque thing... You're experiencing what most all of us have at one point in time or another in stripped threads - broken bolts etc. All of this will be remembered "the next time" and form the basis of your own personal database of "just how tight is tight"...

A couple of things here;

1) You may want to compare your torque wrench with another or have it calibrated.
2) Torque wrenches are not at all accurate when using extensions. If I ever have to use an extension on a socket to torque it down - I use an "Impact" extension (far stronger and less likely to twist - absorbing the torque you're applying).
3) Castle Nuts are not typically made of soft metal - on the contrary, they are typically higher grade. One thing that may not seem evident to you is that the amount of thread engagement of the 6 castle points of the nut are not very strong and cannot be counted upon for retention - therefore the remainder of the nut (below the castles) is all you have. This means typically that you're only working with a half-sized nut. Putting the torque that you would normally use on a full size hardened nut on a Castle nut will sometimes put you in the predicament you are in.
The points on the castle (slots in the nut) are there for only one purpose - to engage the cotter key.

If I were you - I would go to the hardware store and invest in a couple handful of assorted nuts and bolts from grade-3 through grade-8. Put the bolts in a vice, then top with a washer and then a nut. Tighten by hand with a ratchet until they snap or strip. This will help populate that database I was talking about earlier. Compare the breaking points of like sized nuts/bolts between the various grades. Also try putting oil on the threads and washers to see how that impacts the breaking point etc..

Hang in there...

 

[Pete K.]

Great book on the topic: Carroll Smith's "Nuts, Bolts, Fasteners and Plumbing"

 

[Alex]

Hi Alex,

Like some of the others here - I suspect that you're over-thinking this torque thing... You're experiencing what most all of us have at one point in time or another in stripped threads - broken bolts etc. All of this will be remembered "the next time" and form the basis of your own personal database of "just how tight is tight"...

A couple of things here;

1) You may want to compare your torque wrench with another or have it calibrated.
2) Torque wrenches are not at all accurate when using extensions. If I ever have to use an extension on a socket to torque it down - I use an "Impact" extension (far stronger and less likely to twist - absorbing the torque you're applying).
3) Castle Nuts are not typically made of soft metal - on the contrary, they are typically higher grade. One thing that may not seem evident to you is that the amount of thread engagement of the 6 castle points of the nut are not very strong and cannot be counted upon for retention - therefore the remainder of the nut (below the castles) is all you have. This means typically that you're only working with a half-sized nut. Putting the torque that you would normally use on a full size hardened nut on a Castle nut will sometimes put you in the predicament you are in.
The points on the castle (slots in the nut) are there for only one purpose - to engage the cotter key.

If I were you - I would go to the hardware store and invest in a couple handful of assorted nuts and bolts from grade-3 through grade-8. Put the bolts in a vice, then top with a washer and then a nut. Tighten by hand with a ratchet until they snap or strip. This will help populate that database I was talking about earlier. Compare the breaking points of like sized nuts/bolts between the various grades. Also try putting oil on the threads and washers to see how that impacts the breaking point etc..

Hang in there...

1 is unlikely because I had it calibrated a few weeks before i started using it again (and it was still only off by like 3% after 2yrs of use)

2 is unlikely because there was no extension on it

3 might be, but I always thought castle nuts were softer than grade 8 nuts because they re-tap incredibly easily, and after using a wrench on it the edges are starting to "deform" (i.e., it doesn't look brand new anymore...but that might just be the coating)

All good ideas and valid, but I guess we'll never really know. It's just like my cobra's radiator - it sprung a leak at 1400miles. Obviously most people would point the finger at me because of my ....special.... build ....talents.....(you have electrolysis, you have too much vibration from how you mounted it, etc.... ; just like you applied too much torque to it), but in the end it turned out to be a design flaw that caused a perptual hot spot. (but they're taking care of me, so it's all good in the end). Maybe it was my fault, maybe I got a bad oem balljoint. *shrug*

On the positive side though, I did get to learn how to use a pickle fork :idea:

 

[Jack]

Well Alex, that's how we all learn things so don't fret about it, simply move on...
All experiences can be looked upon as "good" as long as no persons are harmed
and we learn something however mundane it may seem at the time.

 

[Randy V]

Ingenuity +1
After spending a while figuring out how the heck I was going to torque the inner control arm bolts (and almost throwing out my shoulder trying to wedge myself and a breaker bar down there) I figured out I only needed about 3 1/2ft of extension and a piece of wood to balance it :thumbsup:

aforementioned extension...

 

[Alex]

aforementioned extension...

Oh, i see what you mean (I was thinking 'huh? balljoint extension??'). Yea, I also pre-marked the bolt before I began to torque it, making sure the mark more-or-less lined up with where I'd expect it to finish at, so I wasn't just going based on torque there.

But for those buggers, it's either 4ft of extension or you're going to end up throwing out your shoulder trying to pull a breaker bar in that tight area.

 

[Randy V]

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know much about the SL-C, but if the suspension is anything like that of my RCR40, I would not torque anything until the alignment was done. Also - the lower control arm bolts need to be "Tight" but I would not say that they need to be torqued to the teeth either.. RCR makes liberal use of Nylock nuts and they are sufficient to keep these bolts (which are in shear only) in place with a reasonable amount of torque applied when installed.

 

[Jack]

Randy, I believe the front suspension is identical..