Quote:
Originally Posted by California98Civic
I'm too inexperienced, so I'm gonna need another torque wrench that will measure the 14ft/lbs I need. Mine bottoms out at 20 and has a long handle. If I put that cover back without complete confidence I'll be bugged by it all the time.
(Philosophy for ecomodders: I think part of good modding and maintaining, like life, is knowing how and when to compensate for our limits. Knowing the "when" might be the trickiest part. But the experience of failures builds an "intuition" like sense of when we need assistance with a task.)
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Why buy another tool?
When you break the bolt loose, you get a good feel for the amount of torque it had unless it was basically frozen in place and took a lot of force to break it loose. 6X1 MM bolts, into aluminum are about 6 foot pounds from memory.
The rubber gasket does the sealing and I think the bolts either bottom out or have a shoulder or spacer to keep them in at same depth after tightening.
Use one finger on your ratchet and pull it down tight. If you are worried about it not being tight enough, check it after a couple of drives and see if it is still tight.
Almost every fastener I have ever tightened would be good at 45-90 degrees past the point where it required any force to tighten it further. If you are worried about stripping it, then go 30 degrees or 1/10th of a revolution after force is necessary. Once you have done it a few times it gets instinctive.
Bottom line is too loose and you can tighten it, too tight and you get to helicoil it.
While I would not apply that principle to fasteners that are not accessible, for valve cover bolts it works perfectly.
I stripped the wing nut (shifter tension) on my Schwinn bike with just my fingers, but it was brass and I had a spare.
Anyone here ever have to helicoil every cylinder head bolt thread, into the block, on a Nissan Z28 motor? How about the broken off rear exhaust manifold stud. I managed to do that one, on my own car, without removing the manifold. Got so good a drilling out studs, they looked as well aligned as a gun barrel when I got them out. I could drill them out so close to the threads that the remaining thread came out like a spring and the replacement bolt spun in by hand easily, but of course not when it was steel into aluminum.
regards
Mech