[s-cars] More on audi wheel bolts/studs/torque

[Robert Pastore]

Scott:

I'm in the opposite club!
Last year at the Glen, I would check my wheel toque HOT after every run,
with a "clicker" type torque wrench.   Never thought of backing the nuts
off, just click, click, click...Ok.

Roll forward to end of day, time to remove Hoosiers...No f^**ing way.   One
of the front lug bolts wasn't budging, so I tried to call in Professional
Help.  Along comes Steve Early's friend and resident LumberJack/Mechanic
"Jake", who tries his best but winds up stripping the head of the lug till
it's nearly round.   Finally, I drove down the hill into town on the Hoosier
into Smalley's garage, sacrificed my 4" socket extension and we welded the
extension to the lug bolt.  After several broken welds, a lot more heat than
I would have like to have seen, we finally got the bolt/socket extension
out.   Steve Early now uses it as a prop in his NEQ "torque your wheels"
lectures.

Lesson:  Torque your wheels, but do it right!
Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: QSHIPQ at aol.com [mailto:QSHIPQ at aol.com]
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 11:41 AM
To: urq at audifans.com; quattro at audifans.com; s-car-list at audifans.com;
v8 at audifans.com; 200q20v at audifans.com; audi20v at rennlist.org
Subject: [s-cars] More on audi wheel bolts/studs/torque


After my Gingermann incident 2 weekends ago (wheel off), and subsequent list
'engineering' chatter, my second performance operations opportunity came
this
past weekend at LSPR with the S2 Rally car.  The car is an audisport 95 S2
with sport q brakes and stud conversion.  We ran 2 different sets of wheels
tires (compomotive no spacers and ABT mit spacers).  Obviously wheel torque
was still fresh on my mind.

Studs in terms of torque?  Didn't appear to do a damn thing boys, spacers or
no....   The wheel nuts were still loose after only 2 stages of running, and
rechecks of wheel torques during the rally indicated that the fresh wheel
change does affect wheel bolt torque, and after a couple of rechecks
(without
wheel change) the torque remained constant.  This experience supports BB and
my contention that frequent retorques in a performance environment should be
the riguer, and any other "fix" is complicated by definition.

ALL top teams (including mitsu and scoobies) were retorquing wheels at EVERY
service stop, wheel change or not.  Bretts comments on "hot wheel" torque
might be worth pursuing...  But IME, you don't have time to cool the wheels
in most performance arenas (you couldn't hold the hot wheel nuts during
swaps
in my case).   I've personally never heard of a "revised" hot wheel bolt/nut
torque in practice.

Studs on our car are due to be replaced.  FYI, I doubt ANY shop would (they
shouldn't anyway) reuse a pressed out wheel bearing.  The risk of doing the
job twice isn't worth the effort.  We also experienced slag deposits on the
studs from removing and installing hot wheels.  The easy thing to do is to
replace wheel bolts at a routine interval, make sure hub threads are clean
(a
battery brush works well here) and allow no radial play of bolts

WRT jamb nuts on studs....  I'd never do it, and few fastener manufacturers
would recommend it.  Get the 10.9 grade bolts/nuts and recheck torque often,
or even more....

As an aside, I've gotten several humorous stories of those who lost a wheel
sometime in their lifetime (I'm in more company than I thought).  Common
denominator?  All members of this club, are now pretty fanatical about wheel
fastener torque.  And the average "loss" count in this club is *exactly* 1.
Hmmm.    Sure hope all this saves someone else from this ascribed
membership.

Studs aren't "overkill", nor a fix.  Get a torque wrench, and overkill the
use of it.

HTH

Scott Justusson., M.A.C.
Membership Avoidance Counselor
3 wheeler club

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