Hi everyone, I have a weekend to kill coming up so I am planning to paint my calipers. I don't have a torque wrench or anything fancy and I was wondering if the wrench that comes for changing the tires is sufficient enough to tighten the lug nuts to a safe level.

 

factory torque spec's are 100 lb, or 2 good grunts. lol

 

When the car is jacked up the front tires are going to spin when you try to loosen or tighten the lugs. In the absence of a torque wrench, what you have to do is loosen the lugs a little before you jackthe car up, then finish taking the lugs off after the car is jacked up. Reverse this procedure to tighten up the lugs. Get them as tight as you can while the car is jacked up, then finish tightening them once the is on the ground.

 

In the absence of a torque wrench, you run the risk of over-tightening the lugs which, with aluminum rims, can lead to cracked rims. Unless you have a sense of "tight enough" (which clearly you don't have the experience) go buy an inexpensive torque wrench. It may not be as perfectly accurate as an expensive one, but it'll be close enough.

dseid2 has some good advice, except thatit dosen't require a torque wrench to remove the lugs, just tightening them.

 

Not to mention that under-torquing thelug nuts which makes you a hazard to everybody on the road including yourself and the potential to crash your car. Aside from those minorsafety issues overtorquing the wheels can also cause uneven pressure on the rotors and brake vibrations that mysteriously come and go when hot and the dealer cannot seem to duplicate.

There is absolutely nobody with a calibrated arm and 100ft/lbs needs to be 100ft/lbs. in a star pattern and worked up to in at least 2 stages. Get yourself an inexpensive 1/2" beam type torque wrench and know you did it right and safely.

Cheers!

 

I need to make a correction to my post. When I said "in the absence of a torque wrench" I was thinking air impact wrench. With and air impact wrench the tires can be off the ground when you remove the lugs. So no you don't need a torque wrench to remove lugs.

Also note that my family was in the tire recapping business for 40 years. I grew up in the business and as a teenager I changed, mounted and balanced thousands of tires. I always used an air impact wrench, never a torque wrench. If you go to any tire shop you will see the same thing. So while tightening your lugs with a torque wrench might be nice, it is not necessary. So yes, the lug wrench that came with you car will tighten your lugs just fine. You want them tight, but not over tightened. If you are uncomfortable with this you should probably seek professional help.

Hope it goes well!

 

Also over torquing can lead to warped rotors. Proper torque is important go to Sears and pick up and inexpensive torque wrench.

Richard

 

Hi 06GT4RAD,

Actually you cannot physically"warp" a rotor by over torquing your wheel lug nuts, this is an old wives tale. The problem is thatuneven pressure on the rotor hatsby the wheelshas the potential to cause serious problems. By introducing an uneven load distributionon the rotor hatthis uneven loadcan lead to very slight rotor distortion which can cause brake vibrations when the rotors get hot enough which reducesbrake efficency and increases stopping distances. The distortion causes the pads to skip over parts of the rotor surface and clamp onto other parts of the rotor surface over and over. Eventually (read this assoon after),thisleads to rotor thickness variation and/or hardening of thespots where the pads areclamping the rotors but not the area that is skipped over causing noise and vibration as the rotors heat up and increaserotor distortion. Once started this process is started it cannot be resolved for long even by turning the rotors without replacing the rotors with newparts due to the inadvertent hardening of spots all around the rotors. All of which is variouslybad, dangerous, expensive to fix and could be avoided by simply taking care when torqueing your wheel lug nuts properly.

HTH!

Edited for clarity and typos as I find them.

 

I did not say it warped the rotor. I said it can "lead to" warped rotors. You simply gave a better explanation than i did. So thanks for filling in the blanks

Richard

 

That's not the right way to tighten lug nuts, or any other critical fastener, no matter how many times you did it. Any reputable tire shop you go to these days either uses torque limiting sockets or a torque wrench. Besides the fact that it's the right way to do it, their liability demands it.
You and your family are obviously free to do what you want, but IMO to advise someone in the manner you have is irresponsible and wrong.