Originally Posted by
Jpdv
You are absolutely right in my case... I'm in the 'have never torqued wheel nuts in 45 years of driving' camp, and happy with my practice based on not being dead yet, or. having a succession of wheel missiles hurtle expensively from my vehicles. But I'd always torque bolts on expensive, complex, and 'hard to see easily every day' bits and pieces like transmission and engine components. The thing is, they are absolutely precision bits of engineering that will pay you back for sloppy treatment.
Without getting flamed to death here, wheel nuts and the hub are not at the same level. We used to regularly do an exercise in the military of putting a wheel back on a landrover with the nuts and jack missing (a test of initiative and strength). The solution was to remove a nut from each of the other wheels, and have 3 blokes lift the affected corner while their mate slipped the wheel on. All 4 wheels then had less than the complete set of nuts, but the vehicle (with 3 or 4 untorqued but heaved tight nuts on its wheels) could be (and was) driven to a 'safe' location... No one died doing this.
Ironically, this thread, and the fact that LR ownership is a fun journey into DIY mechanical games, (so my shed and tools are getting a good workout), means that I may use the torque wrench next time - more to see how 140 compares to my usual 'heave' than anything else...