sf3r8z

I recently had all 4 tires replaced. Standard procedure is to retorque after 50 miles. Each lug nut on this car's wheels should be torqued to 76 ft lbs. If some or all of the nuts were overtorqued, does it make sense to just loosen them to 76. In order to know if overtorquing to say, 85 or more ft lbs damaged the threads, you would have to examine the bolts by removing each nut and removing the wheel.

If threads were damaged by overtorquing and you did't examine the threads., I think there would be the potential for the wheel to loosen over time. Therefore, removing wheels with overtorqed nuts for examination seems to make sense. What do you think?

oldgrump

I wouldn't overthink this. Automotive wheel studs are made from "really good stuff" and it would take a lot more than the overtorquing of the nuts by 10 or 20 ft/lbs to affect the strength of the stud or damage the stud and/or the nut threads. I'll bet that most shops as standard practice "graunch"/overtorque (ie. impact wrench) wheel attach nuts just to ensure that they'll "never back off". Even if they have a torque wrench I'll bet it has not recently been torque tested/calibrated.......if ever. EVERY time a car that I've owned has had wheels installed by a shop the attach nuts have been way overtightened. It would actually be more critical if you were to find one or more nuts loose (or the wheel itself), then a visual inspection of the stud and nut threads would be in order. If you find the nuts all tight but overtorqued then just back them off (one at a time, and generally don't use a torque wrench for loosening) to something under 76 ft/lbs (but still "snug") and then tighten the nut to the specified torque. I have a Craftsman click type torque wrench (uncalibrated in 15 years) and I've just been using 80 ft/lbs. I'd rather be a little overtorqued than undertorqued.......also, with a run of the mill 1/2" ft/lbs torque wrench you'd be lucky to have one than was accurate to +/- 5 ft/lbs at midrange. I worked in an industry where all the torque wrenches were required to be tested/calibrated at specified periods, which drove our tool repair guy bonkers with some of them. There was always someone who could bugger a perfectly good torquewrench, it seemed. We used mostly Snap-On and Proto wrenches.......parts were readily available.

sf3r8z

Thank you oldgrump. What you suggested makes sense, both technical and common. At the same time, it saves me a whole lot of trouble.