Thread: Idiots and rattle guns

i have a decent Wurth rattle gun with low torque settings for doing up, and automatically uses the full 450Nm to undo. always recheck by hand afterwards, and almost always they require retensioning.

jc

JC is yours the one that does the torque control electronically or the air valved one?

If its the electronic one, Dont trust it too much, One of the failure modes is to fail to full power...

Highly entertaining when the guns being used with a deep reach to spin down nuts on some long, fine pitch Stainless steel M5 studs

only air valve, i'd trust it more than any electronic controlled ones (didn't know they existed???). of course you have to remember to set it first

jc

Came across 2 girls in a Defender on the Coastal Hwy in 2010 with a flat.
These girls were very capable but couldn't get the nuts undone.
42deg. 2 dogs in the back, no shade.
Wheels had recently been rotated and tyres checked by tyre dealer in Exmouth for their trip to Perth. Rattle gun used.
I bent every bar in my toolbox and failed to loosen any of them.
Ended up taking them back to the last roadhouse.
Could easily have been a life threatening situation.
Terry

i always ask that they use my wheel brace ( i leave it on the drivers seat) when refitting the nuts and i always check before driving off that i can undo them.......5 min of my time at the time of picking up my rig save frustration later

the horror stories go on . As an idea to how tight they do them up a standard defender wheel nut is 80 ft/lbs , heavy duty Wolf is 120 ft/lbs and Discos are 103ft/lbs. Now those are fairly high torque figures yet all can be easily undone with a standard wheel brace by my 15yo daughter!
Now having personally bent breaker bars undoing tyre shop nuts it is amazing more are not just twisted off by those so called x-spurts!

The reverse also happens. At White Motor Corp the wheel nuts were tightened on the assembly line with a calibrated rattle gun. After post assembly inspection and road test, the nuts were slackened off and retorqued by hand with a torque wrench. Over-tightening wheel nuts on spider wheels was a source of rim distortion and cyclic rough ride syndrome hence the care taken in tightening to correct torque only.

Truckies would take delivery of a new truck and say to us "Don't you guys tighten wheel nuts? I checked them at (here insert name of town) and I put a quarter turn on them and 100 k's later put some more on." Their method of tightening was usually to stand on a long bar until nothing moved. No amount of explaining the engineering reasons behind tightening to given torque only would sink in. "If they are not done up tight they will loosen and lose a wheel" they would say. Not so.

Originally Posted by justinc

only air valve, i'd trust it more than any electronic controlled ones (didn't know they existed???). of course you have to remember to set it first

jc

sorry, should have stipulated...

its on their electric rattle guns....