Guys, when BigInch Blake and I were at our last car show, he showed me something disturbing on his GT. The driver side rear axle nut paint stripe did not align. This is a safety critical nut which holds the rear axle assembly together. When the final assembly person torqued these nuts a paint stripe was applied to the nut and to the axle. The theory being that if the two paint stripes maintained alignment, the nut (or bolt as these paint stripes were applied to bolt heads as well) was still properly torqued or tensioned.
It is fairly easy to check this on your car. If you have the optional BBS forged wheels you will need to remove the wheel to gain visual access to the nut, unless you can remove the center cap without removing the wheel. I have the standard wheels and if you remove the chromed triwing plastic cover to gain access to the wheel lug nuts you can see the axle nut and its striping.
While preparing my car for this year’s rally, I inspected my nuts and found a similar situation on the driver side. The two stripes were off by approximately 40 degrees, signifying loosening of the retaining nut. The passenger side was off just slightly and not nearly as much as the driver side. See pictures.
I would suggest looking at these nuts on your vehicle. As I stated, this is classified as a safety critical torque and the nuts should be torqued to 400 newton meters plus/minus 30 Nm. Ok, for those CGS challenged 295 ftlbs plus/minus 22 ftlbs. This is a big boy torque. My half inch torque wrench only goes to 150 ftlbs so I had to borrow a much larger three quarter drive wrench to torque the nuts back to spec.
Just an FYI to the ownership.
It is fairly easy to check this on your car. If you have the optional BBS forged wheels you will need to remove the wheel to gain visual access to the nut, unless you can remove the center cap without removing the wheel. I have the standard wheels and if you remove the chromed triwing plastic cover to gain access to the wheel lug nuts you can see the axle nut and its striping.
While preparing my car for this year’s rally, I inspected my nuts and found a similar situation on the driver side. The two stripes were off by approximately 40 degrees, signifying loosening of the retaining nut. The passenger side was off just slightly and not nearly as much as the driver side. See pictures.
I would suggest looking at these nuts on your vehicle. As I stated, this is classified as a safety critical torque and the nuts should be torqued to 400 newton meters plus/minus 30 Nm. Ok, for those CGS challenged 295 ftlbs plus/minus 22 ftlbs. This is a big boy torque. My half inch torque wrench only goes to 150 ftlbs so I had to borrow a much larger three quarter drive wrench to torque the nuts back to spec.
Just an FYI to the ownership.
