Ok, raise your hand if you ever snapped off a bolt by tightening the shit out of it (TTSOOI)
Growing up nobody I know had a torque wrench. If something was leaking you TTSOOI until it quit. If something was falling off you TTSOOI until it went back into place and stayed there.
No homeowner or backyard mechanic in our hood used one. When you put your lug nuts on your cars steel wheels....way before aluminum wheels were invented....you tightened the nuts until they squealed....that’s tight...and when you broke them loose they squealed.
During the last month I’ve had the pleasure of changing a lower intake gasket on my 2000 Chevy van. For those of you unfamiliar with the van motor placement...the entire motor is centered right under the dashboard....meaning you have reach way over the radiator from the front and kneel on the floor inside to reach everything from the back....not optimal working conditions to be sure.
That said, during the put it back together sequence...you must torque the bolts in a certain sequence like lug nuts and you go around that sequence several times increasing the torque settings as you do...
So I bought a 3/8” torque wrench (the majority of my sockets are 3/8”)...now Torque wrenches come in different measurements.... one being foot pounds, one being inch pounds, one being Newton meters.....whatever the hell that is...
Because part of the new gasket system contains two parts, one being regular gaskets as you would normally expect and the use of RTV liquid gasket...you squeeze from a tube like caulking...setting the intake requires precise installation. Meaning it must be set down squarely in place so you can’t drag it or you’ll mess up the RTV and ruin the seal. And if you do mess up the RTV seal, you won’t know it until you start the motor....Doing all this under the dashboard on your knees is no easy task. It’s actually a two man job...to quote my mechanic.
Now it was time to use my brand new torque wrench....in the tightening sequence....making a long story short, not really knowing the subtle sign (noise) handle motion of the wrench indicating you reached the torque setting you set.....I snapped off not one but 2 intake bolts in the block....that could mean certain death for your motor...
In the process of ruining the hardened bolts I also ruined the torque wrench....taking a torque wrench past the current setting will kill it....the final foot pound setting for those bolts is 11 foot pounds which isn’t terribly tight....I think I set a world record for bolt tightness ....
Back to the drawing board taking the intake back out and starting over. I got extremely lucky. Including the trip to the hardware store for cobalt drill bits and the actual bolt removal only took an hour.....the bolts hadn’t snapped off because they bottomed out...they snapped off because I stretched them past their breaking point. They still could spin in the hole. As I said, I got extremely lucky...
So now I had to buy another torque wrench....this time I bought a 1/4” drive. The bolt tightening sequence requires inch pounds for two passes the foot pounds for the last pass. I figured by using a 1/4” drive the tendency for over tightening would be reduced.....
The reason you don’t want to over tighten the intake bolts is because you can unseat the cam shaft bearings under the intake inside the block....oh boy..
After snapping off two bolts before every bolt I tightened after that had me gun-shy. Fear of snapping another bolt was there on every crank of that wrench.....I basically limp wristed them in...wincing with every click..
Moral of the story is....bolts have an elasticity which is what enables them to hold.
Please read the following articles on the importance of torquing....not twerking ...
https://search.yahoo.com/searc…toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8
These articles are pretty short but they explain everything very well. I learned a lot of good info and why we all need torque wrenches....inch pounds and foot pounds. Our service manual has a complete list of torque values for every nut and bolt on the slingshot...use them. Don’t be a bolt snapping, torque wrench killer.
