Scared the crap out of me....

[Jguarfn28]

I changed my tires at home a couple of months ago. I have Harbor Freight Torque wrenches that I have some doubts about. Mostly because they never seem to pop at the torque setting and I don't want to replace a broken bolt. At any rate, I was backing Sylvia into the garage and heard a scraping noise that made me wonder where it was coming from. When I bent over and looked at the front axle, I did a double take. The front axle bolt was sticking out 2" from the fork base. I had tightened them where "I" thought was really tight, obviously, "I" was mistaken.
Broke out my Craftsman Beam Torque Wrench and checked the shop manual this time and locked it down at 74lbs. Used the HF 3/8's in. for the lock bolt and hit 22lbs, I hope. I had put a couple of thousand miles on the 705 Shinko's and they seem to be no worse for wear. Glad I am still around to post this encouragement to check your nuts and bolts. Especially your nuts.......

 

[Harvey]

Scary. Glad it held up until you were home.

 

[Beemerphile]

As the squirrels in my back yard always say...

"It's all fun and games until someone loses a nut."

 

[670cc]

I'm glad you discovered the problem before venturing out that day.

However, in trying to understand the root cause, I'm confused. What was the fault with the HF torque wrenches? Are these the click type wrenches? If they "never seem to pop at the torque setting", how did you determine when to stop tightening? Or are you saying that since you don't trust the wrenches, you had tightened the axle without using a torque wrench?

At any rate, this makes a good case for the security of the castle nut/cotter pin design.

 

[johnakay]

close call.
good to hear your here to tell the tale so to speak.

 

[Jguarfn28]

Yeah, I had avoided the torque wrenches because of my mistrust of them being accurate. I decided to trust them now, for the lock bolt and the beam torque wrench was recommended to me by another home mechanic.

 

[L.B.S.]

Torque wrenches or no, loctite or no, supposedly self locking nuts or no, I don't understand what the need was to stop using the tried and true castle nuts and cotter pins. Since getting my other Honda in 2007 which shares many of the same style and type of fasteners as my NC, I was rather dismayed to find such things as the simple old axle retention method mucked with, and now forced to deal with things like single use fasteners, no cotter pins, fragile tabs instead of a bolt or a peg and grommet set up, etc.