Ball Loosened, Use Loctite?
From time to time my son or I have to tow bar his 1946 Chevrolet 2 ton rack truck. He uses it for his food catering business. Being it is old it breaks down once a year. So when booked to do a p...
Forum Discussion
mkirsch wrote:
Are people so intent on proving themselves right that they will bicker over 6 pages of thread over <1% difference?
We're tightening a hitch ball here fellas, not machining parts for the space shuttle.
If the spec is 250 ft-lbs, it's not going to snap off at 251 ft-lbs, and it's not going to fall apart at 249 ft-lbs. Heck it's not going to snap off at 260 ft-lbs or fall apart at 240 ft-lbs. Everything has tolerances, except maybe space shuttle parts.
A 200lb guy putting all his weight on a 15" lever arm will exert 250 ft-lbs of torque. Stand on it until it stops turning, and maybe give it a little bounce-bounce for good measure. It's tight enough, and if you take it to the professional and have them put their torque wrench on it, I bet it will be within 5%
To be fair, the thread got a bit off topic so we weren't "bickering" about a ball hitch. We weren't even bickering as much as discussing. I, for one, welcome discussion as I wouldn't have given the proper thought as to what does or doesn't affect a torque wrench were it not for this thread.
The reality is most people don't have access to a 200+ ft-lb torque wrench so the accuracy is probably a moot point. The past few I've installed either had the included plastic crush washer, were assembled on a drawbar already or were just bolting onto my quad where the torque wasn't important.
