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A shop in Bakersfield changed how I torque heads forever
I pulled into this small diesel shop outside Bakersfield last month for a quick gasket job, and the old guy there watched me torque a head bolt with my usual pattern. He just shook his head and said, 'You're chasing the torque number, not the stretch.' He had me mark each bolt before final pass, then back off and redo it with a gauge. Cost me an extra 40 minutes, but now I check stretch on every rebuild, no exceptions. Anyone else had a veteran mechanic school them on something they thought they knew cold?
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riley_miller2512d ago
Funny how the same lesson shows up everywhere, machines and people both need slack sometimes.
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william_torres12d ago
My uncle had the same thing happen to him back in 2002 with an old Cummins 12 valve. He was dead set on hitting 75 ft/lbs and then the 90 degree turn, thought he was the king of the shop. This old timer from Texas walked by, laughed, and said he could hear the bolts crying before they even snapped. Sure enough, one of them was stretched past spec and would have let go within 500 miles. Now my uncle does the stretch method on anything that holds oil, even lawn mower heads. He drives all the way to that same shop just to hand the guy a six pack of Coors every few months. I still use torque wrenches for small stuff, but anything with a head gasket involved gets the old school treatment now. Thats the kind of lesson you only learn from someone who has seen the inside of too many blown motors.
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