The New Hotness

The shop spec says the lug nut torque shall be 104 newton·meter or an equally odd 77 lb·ft. Let’s not get into quibbles about the differences between lb·ft and ft·lb here, OK?

Anyhow, based on the wildly differing and grossly excessive tire pressures left by the guys who installed the new tires, I figured the lug nuts would be over-torqued… as, indeed, they were. My bending-beam torque wrench goes up to 140 n·m and didn’t even come close to breaking those puppies loose.

So I deployed a manly breaker bar and applied most of my weight to the far end. A back of the envelope guesstimate says they were well over 200 n·m, with a few grunt outliers.

Yes, the breakaway torque can be higher than the tightening torque, but they were far beyond even that level.

Lubed the threads, tightened to spec, and it’s all good. I’ll check them next week just to be sure, but sheesh if we had to fix a flat on the road, it would have gotten ugly.