<VV> LH lug nuts

[Hugo Miller]

I take your point about 'bolt stretch', but if all the faces are clean 
it is irrelevant. Only if you have enough dirt, rust or paint on the 
faces, and that subesquently wears off (as it will) with the expansion & 
contraction with the temperature changes, together with all the other 
forces at work - only then does it become an issue.
I rebuilt a Kenworth W900 a few years ago, and the rear wheel fixings 
were exactly the same as my buses back in England, with the exception 
that there was no wheel spacer fitted. The idea of the spacer, 
incidentally, was that you would remove the spacer if you fitted thicker 
Alcoa wheels - saves changing all the wheel studs.
The trouble with using a torque wrench is that most people fit the lug 
nuts dry. If you try t fit a dry lug nut onto a stud that has been 
stretched by previous over-tightening, much of the applied torque will 
be taken up in turning the nut on the threads, rather than stretching 
the stud. And that is an important point also - studs and bolts act as a 
very strong spring, clamping everything together. The old British 
Triumph motorcycles never gave a torque setting for their big-end nuts 
(con-rod bolts, that is). They specified that the bolts be tightened 
until they stretched 1/8". (It may not have been 1/8", but that is the 
principle).
I reckon I can tell by feel whether a nut is stiff on the thread or 
whether it is stretching the bolt. A torque wrench, on the other hand, 
can't tell the difference. I have occasionally checked my wheel nuts 
with a torque wrench, just for curisity, and I can get them as near spot 
on as makes no difference (about 450 lb/ft is the spec). And my wheel 
nuts never come loose. And even if they did, it wouldn't matter, as four 
nuts on each wheel are secured by retaining clips.

On 2020-03-23 23:18, Joel McGregor via VirtualVairs wrote:
> "We have always just had one wheel nut x 10 clamping the whole
> assembly together. On my caoches, you have the drum, then a spacer,
> the a pair of wheels."
> I've never seen anything like that over here.
>
> "The problem is not that this is too much to clamp together, it is
> that if you count all the mating surfaces from the hub flange
> outwards, that totals eight. If you have five thou of paint, dirt or
> rust on each surface, you will lose 1/16" in total when that lot 
> wears
> off, so the nuts come loose."
> That's what I was saying.  1/16" is way more than the bolt stretch
> that the proper torque creates so they end up with loose nuts.
> If you don't use a torque wrench I'll bet you are way off.  I got
> away with it for many years but decided it would be better to have
> things right to give everything the best chance of survival.
> I also clean and lube the surfaces when I have them apart.  I have
> had the need re-torque after a few miles especially when I've had to
> replace studs.
>
> Joel McGregor
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