I found this tip on the internet for Honda cars although I'm sure it's good practice on any car. Anybody have recommendations for decent torque wrench for the home mechanic ?
Thanks!


Honda Owner Tips for August 2003
Tip 1: Avoid the shakes: always use a torque wrench to tighten your wheel nuts.
Ever hit your brakes and the steering wheel starts to shake? This is the result of warped front rotors. The cause of the warp is having different torques on the wheel nuts. The rotor is a disc, which gets very hot when the brakes are applied. When the disc cools and you have inconsistent tension on the lug points around the disc, it will bend or warp. That's why you should always use a torque wrench -- if you make sure the wheel nuts are at the same torque, you'll avoid the shakes.

 

What are the torque specs for the TSX wheel nuts? I have a wrench, but don't know how tight to make them.

 

80 ft-lbs (technically 79.6 or something too accurate for normal humans).

I pikced up a cheap torque wrench from Harbor Freight for $10 or so.

 

11kg or 108nm

 

Sigh...damn metric system.

 

Always torque the lug nuts!!!. My cousin was stupid when he put on my wheels, over tightened them and now my front rotors are warped. I'm getting performance rotors anyways, so I really don't care, but until I do it's a real pain in the ass. When braking from 80-0 it feels like my hands are being massaged by the steering wheel lol.

Best advice I could give when putting on rims

l8ers
Wess

 

What type of performance rotors are you getting? I have had warped rotors three time on 23k miles and always serviced at the dealer. So I am not sure the torque is the answer to the warping problem.

 

At my shop we hand torque EVERY lugnut for this reason and now we see virtually zero comebacks for warped rotors- we go through about 6 torque wrench's a year but its well worth the expense to do the job the right way. Also I am sure most of you know this but torque them in the "star" pattern.

 

I had warped rotors at 11k, 17k and 23k. Are you saying they did not use torque wrench at the factory and dealer?

 

Well if I didn't put on my new rims then it would've been a warranty issue, but since I did, they blamed it on that lol. I'm sure it was like that before, but in the winter time I never tried braking from 80-100 to 0.

Wess

 

Chances are very slim, I have never heard of a dealer hand torqueing with out being asked to. I would sort of set them up, I would just call out of the blue and figure some scheme to get an honest answer from the service manager. Claim you are a salesman for a revolutionary new torque stick and are curious how they torque there lugnuts, and you want to show them how your great new torque sticks are. For those not familiar a torque stick is what some shops use, its a colored rod with a socket end that goes onto an impact gun and allows a controled amount of torque to make it to through- the problem with these is they are fairly inconsistant and can back off the buts when they stop. There is no substitute for hand torqueing- IMO. I would bet the techs. just whale on them with an impact- an easy way to tell yourself is to take one lugnut off and try threading it on by hand till it stops against the wheel. if you can't they have been hammered on with an air gun, that's another problem with impacts. They will stretch the threads on both the lugnut and stud making it impossible to turn down by hand- over torqueing also damages the seat where the lugnut meets the wheel. The TSX is new enough that the stretched threads and lugnuts/wheel seats may not show any damage. Hope you could make some sense of that I am in a rush and wanted to reply to your query, if you want further clarifications let me know and I will get back to you tomorrow.