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The parts guy who told me to stop torquing to spec on my old truck | Brake Pad Diaries - Rigidtalk

The parts guy who told me to stop torquing to spec on my old truck

Ran into a veteran mechanic at the AutoZone on Route 9 last fall. He watched me torque my caliper bracket bolts to 80 ft-lbs and laughed, said on a 1998 F-150 with 210k miles that spec is for fresh threads. He told me to back it down to 65 and use a little blue Loctite instead. I thought he was blowing smoke, but two of the original bolts had already stretched. Re-did all four corners with his method, and the front end noise I chased for six months finally disappeared. Anyone else have a shop guy give advice that straight up contradicts the manual?

2 comments

2 Comments

willow6722mo ago

Wait, so the manual is basically a suggestion now and some guy in an AutoZone parking lot knows more than Ford engineers? That tracks, honestly, my Haynes manual says my truck should be able to carry a full sheet of plywood in the bed without issue, but that thing almost snapped in half last summer. I had a similar thing happen with an old Jeep, some guy at a gas station told me to ignore the torque spec on the oil drain plug and just go until it feels snug. He was right too, because the previous owner had stripped the pan before I got it, and the right spec was just asking for trouble. The real lesson here is that these old beaters have their own rules by now, and the factory numbers are for when everything was new and shiny. I'm just glad you found the noise, chasing a rattle for six months is enough to drive anyone to quit wrenching and just buy a new truck.

jamiew832mo ago

And honestly, the whole "the book is wrong" thing is so real once these trucks hit a certain age. My buddy had a late 90s F-150 that would overheat in summer no matter what, and some old timer at a car show told him to just leave the radiator cap loose by a quarter turn (weird, I know). We thought he was crazy, but the truck ran cool all summer and never burped coolant once. Of course now his overflow bottle smells like burnt toast, but that's a problem for future him. I swear these vehicles develop personalities and you just have to learn to listen to them instead of the damn manual.