Proper Torque for wheel nuts

Nuts need to be torqued to 76ft lbs. It is somewhere in the back of the manual. I found it last night in there when I was trying to find what torque stick to use.

 

Yes, 76 foot pounds. It's buried on page 369 of the 2007 Owner's Manual.

 

loose nuts

For alloy wheels, the standard advice is to recheck the torques after 100 mi. or so. But I never found them to become loose on my 2001 Prius. I had them off quite frequently as well, being a tire-rotation fanatic.

 

Whoa, you must have some later, improved edition of the 2007 manual --- packed with at least 4 more pages of info! Who'da thunk it?

 

Thanks. Before this thread and the BT Tech Stiffening Plate thread, I never knew that calibrated torque was an issue. Makes me wonder what my mechanics and tire installers were doing (I don't ever remember seeing them calibrating torque ... but my current mechanic said to me once that they have different power wrenches with different maximum torques).

 

If you're a DIY kinda guy, and don't already have impact tools,
may I recommend one of the new cordless impact wrenches. They are simply awesome and will take a lugnut right off, if you lift the wheel off the ground first. I got a Makita 18V Li-Ion impact and it puts out over 110 ft/lb of torque. And it doesn't twist in your hand and sounds cool too.

 

I thought the proper technique was to go as tight as you can, then another half turn.

Tom

 

Thats the DIY way I believe it might even be a 1/4 turn instead of half. $20 for a decent torque wrench from any autostore would be worth it in the longrun. I had a rim almost fly off the car because I forgot to tighten them correctly, the car was wobbling like crazy!

 

I use a torque wrench but the twist dial is so hard to read - too tiny - I just set if for 80 lb ft. My FJ also requires 76 lb ft so at least i don't have to remember different numbers for the two vehicles.

Get this, they even take the same lugnuts for winter on my steel wheels

 

If your as tight as you can go, how can you go further ?

 

Do be careful not to overtorque the wheel nuts. The nice guys at Costco overstretched the studs on a 4Runner I once owned. They proceeded to break over the next two years. Their torque wrench failed (Snapon), and being one of the nice big ones, he was able to over-torque the nuts. They did pay the Toyota dealer to replace all the studs though (front wheel so not fun to remove the hub).

 

Toyota just replaced one of the studs broken in the hub. $110. I love my bumper to bumper $0 deductable extended warrany. It paid for itself 3 times over already, and there's nearly 35K miles left on it.

 

That's the whole joke. It's a standard joke with engineers and others who work around mechanical devices.

Tom

 

Good torque wrench

Use a good clicker type torque wrench and have it calibrated on the schedule that the wrench manufacturer recommends. I work with small aluminum fastners frequently and a good accurate torque wrench is priceless. Lug nuts are less sensitive than small aluminum fastners, but you should still tighten them as accurately as possible. Get a wrench with a range that is appropriate for the torque you need to set. In my experience, the calibration shops like to set it to be most accurate towards the upper end of the wrench scale (you get a report back with your wrench when the calibration shop returns it). Also if you put a small dab of waterproof grease on the threads then that will keep them from ever getting stuck.

 

costco and their refusal to rotate tires because our torque was not in their book.

We bought a set of tires from Costco for our old car. Costco refused to rotate the tires because we couldn't provide the torque specs.

Costco said they lost a multi million dollar law suit wherein a wheel came off of a car that they had torqued. Since then they established a policy of not torqueing tires unless they have the specs.

So, torque specs are important when you buy tires from Costco.

aloha, richard

 

Proper Torque for wheel nuts.

For those with the 2008 Prius and Owner's Manual, p.444 shows the relevant wheel-nut torque values, in addition to the tightening order, which is equally important:

Tightening torque: 76 ft-lb;(103 N-m, 10.5 kg-m).

Ron.

 

Couple of things. 1st, ignore Costco, they lie. They don't get commissions for simple tire maintenance, only on the sale of new tires. So they don't want to do warranty or simple repair work. As far as the customer needing to provide torque settings - that's lame. Any reputable repair shop can look up the number (and should). 2nd, most Prius vehicles with alloy wheels require 76 ft lbs. It's what the manual says. But some additional advice; use progressive torquing. In other words start with 25 ft lbs on all the nuts 1st, then go to 50 ft lbs on all nuts, then 76. That will reduce the possibility of fracturing your wheel. Over tightening alloy wheels can even be worse than under tightening. Don't do either.

 

I was thinking the other day, for that decal in the drivers door opening, that has the VIN, build date and tire pressures: lug nut torque would be handy addition.

or emboss the torque on the lug nut wrench (like oil grade on filler cap). Oh wait, Toyota doesn’t supply those anymore.

then there’s Mazda: every dang torque spec is a range, say 88~100 for example, so you get to split the difference, set your torque wrench to 94.