paddy187

You can't beat a few hours out on the bicycle I have a fausto coppi race bike and try to get 100miles a week on her even in winter on the turbo trainer. Plus I cycle 5miles to the garage were my car is!!!

Derf00

You need a cheater bar attached or a longer TQ wrech. I have a TQ wrench that goes to 250ft/lbs and it's 3 feet long. Doesn't take much with that length.

Soaring

Rina, I am in love..... not with you but your cars. Let's get married so I can drive all your cars.

toolwench

Awww gee... [sm=smiley9.gif]

You mean I'll have more help when I work on them? My husband 'helped' by improperly torquing my flexplate and when it came loose, I got to drop the tranny all by myself. When he offered to drop the exhaust out of the way, I was hesitant, but then realized that he does more damage putting things together than taking them apart! You bet I was the one retorquing the flexplate before getting her back together...I had to curl up under the car, wedge my back against a wheel and use my feet to push the torque wrench, but I got the job done!

Soaring

Good work. I am not a big man either, so I can relate to the curling up and using feet to break things loose while supporting my back against an immovable object. There are some guys on here who have arms larger than our thighs.

67mustang302

Well, first let me start by saying I've done the same thing, but luckily my wheel didn't come off! Second, NEVER overtorque anthything. Trust me, you don't want your lugs to break off when you're going down the freeway at 70mph. And third, I've worked on the BIIIIGGGG natural gas engines and compressors in the oilfields....and when I say big, I'm talking monsterouslygiganticallyhugelyimmenslyamazingly big engines. Think of the torque specs for this beast.....Imagine this, a 22 cylinder engine, 16 powercylinders in a V config and 6 that stick out horizontally from the crankcase, sharing the same crankshaft(those are the compressor cylinders). You have to go up a flight of stairs to get to the valvetrain via a catwalk(oh yes, you're wearing earplugs the entire time and it's still deafening, and the earth shakes). Each cylinder is seperate, and each cylinder has it's own head(each cylinder can be serviced independant of the others that way)...that prolly weigh on the order of about 1,500-2,000lbs, and you need an overhead crane to lift it.The engine isabout 40-50 feet long, and weighs so much that you don't replace it, you rebuild it on site....because to remove it means that you have to disassemble the roof of a building, and call in special LARGE cranes(expensive cranes) and lay the engine down on it's side after it's stripped and roll it out on logs(that can take more than a week using teams of men and cranes). This is because the crankcase alone is a police escorted semi-truck permit load moving at about 15mph and weighing prolly on the order of 50-60k lbs(prolly well over 150k lbs assembled). You have to remove the top half of the engine and use a crane to change out the crankshaft(and you hope you don't have to). Running 2 HUGE turbochargers and natural gas as fuel, the engine produces approximately 5,500hp at an amazingly low 330rpm(max rec. speed). So imagine trying to torque stuff on THAT? Yeah, big.You got to replace certain parts on that bad boy with torque specs of like 1,800ft-lbs. That's when you have a 4.5ft long 600ft-lb torque wrench with a 3:1 planetary gear multiplier and a cheater bar that's made of 3/8 wall steel that's like 8ft long. You have 3 guys just holding the socket in place by basically putting their body weight on the end of the wrench, then 2 guys on the end of the cheater bar(with about 8-10 ft ofleverage)are standing sideways in the air with their feet on some adjacent part of the engine cranking on this thing like they're trying to leg press an elephant. Then of course there's the jamb-nut for the compressor piston connecting rods, I'm sure they have a torque spec....but we just used a wrench that weighed like 150lbs(it was cut from a peice of 4" steel.) and put a 10 ton hydraulic jack under it and jacked up on the wrench till we thought it was tight enough, or the jack seemed like it was about to explode. Good thing our cars aren't like that.

Soaring

Good grief. Now that's some torque on nuts, but we are not in the oil field. We are talkiing about classic Mustangs here. Let's get back to the subject at hand or move on to another subject..

67mustang302

[8D]I just felt like telling a story, there's big stuff out there with wicked torque specs. Of course, it's usually the stuff in cars with small torque specs that'll come back and bite you. Lil inch-lb stuff.

andrewmp6

i work at allstate ford here im the only one that torques the lugnuts rest use a airgun and wonder why they snap studs off or strip the head . even had the idiot shop manager tell me im wasting labor torquing them. so ill be changing jobs soon just remember they let any one use a wrench. theres only 3 people i trust touching my cars.

fastbackford351

Timetravlinn,

Take solace in the fact that you will only do this once.

I am willing to wager dimes to doughnuts that you never EVER again forget to check the lugnuts.

Tough lesson to learn.