[Vwdiesel] bolt reuse

James Hansen jhsg at sasktel.net
Sun Apr 10 23:57:37 EDT 2005


It kind of depends on how critical your engine is, (does the car fall from
the sky when it stops?) and how close to tolerance the fasteners and
associated machining are designed to operate at. If you are in no position
to have a torque wrench calibrated, then don't use clicker type wrenches.
They require periodic calibration to stay accurate.  Your best bet is to own
a beam wrench... yes the cheapo wrench with the pointer.  Interestingly
enough, they stay in calibration the best of all the torque wrenches when
not serviced.  It costs diddly to have a wrench periodically checked
however... for a home shop mechanic, once a year is exceptional QC in the
grand scheme of things.

A cheapie torque wrench is a cheapie torque wrench.  You know the answer to
how accurate it will be without me telling you :-)  BUT, it's better than
nothing, and for most automotive jobs in the range of 30-70ft-lb will be
good enough.  You want to work on fancy turbines like Nick, you need good
tools, because the finished work quality and accuracy is only as good as the
tool and the nut that turns them, and the design of the engine is to a much
much higher tolerances than your garden variety V8 that is designed so that
in normal passenger car use, you could use a dirty crescent wrench and a
hammer to tighten and assemble almost everything and still have it run fine.
Your diesel is a  tad more advanced than the garden variety V8, but not in
the turbine (assemble in a clean room) category either.  But again, you want
to race that V8 at twice to three times the passenger car operating RPM,
you're off to the clean room and hunting up the calibration slip for the
torque wrench to see when it was done last.
-James

-----Original Message-----
From: vwdiesel-bounces+jhsg=sasktel.net at vwfans.com
[mailto:vwdiesel-bounces+jhsg=sasktel.net at vwfans.com]On Behalf Of Shawn
Wright
Sent: Friday, April 08, 2005 7:46 PM
To: vwdiesel at vwfans.com
Subject: RE: [Vwdiesel] bolt reuse


On 8 Apr 2005 at 20:47, mikitka <mikitka at earthlink.net> wrote:

> engine. I'm going to take my torque wrench into work and have the PMEL lab
check
> it's calibration. I want to make sure I put everything back per book
spec's. I

How critical is a good torque wrench for engine building? I have a cheapo
150ft-lb 1/2" one (click type). Is this good enough, or should I borrow a
better one, or get it checked? I'm using 15w40 oil for assembly, hope this
is ok....

Shawn Wright
http://zuiko.sls.bc.ca/~swright
'85 Jetta D
'88 Westy 2.1L, soon to be 1.6TD 5 speed
 (see progress at http://members.shaw.ca/vwdiesels)
'82 Diesel Westy


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