Posted by Nickathome on Sunday, December 12, 2004 at 9:34AM :
I replaced my pinion oil seal yeaterday, and reinstalled the companion flange and nut. The manual says to torque the nut to 300 ftlbs. A guy I work with loaned me his torque wrench, but it only went to 250ftlbs. Regardless, I could not get the wrench to break at 250 no matter what I did. I think its because every time I put pressure on the wrench, the wheels of the truck would walk forward a few inches, thus not allowing the wrench to break. I blocked up the wheels with a block of wood, but it didn't help. So, as a last ditch effort, I aired up the compressor, and used my impact wrench to line up the hole in the pinion shaft with the nut. I put the nut back to where I thought it was when I removed it, and installed a new cotter pin. The problem is, I don't know exactly how much torque I put on the nut. My impact wrench is only a medium duty and only puts out a max of 350 ftlbs, so I know I didn't torque it too excessively. I also only used the impact whrench just to get the holes to line up and no more. Long story short, Did I do any harm with this, and how critical are the specs to torque the pinion nut in the event I did over torque it? Thanks in advance.
Follow Ups: