Wiper Arms- the Moron approach to fixing

[chad]

On my way back from the MOT on Friday the driver's side one just flopped down and stayed there.

Fortunately I'd put Rain-X on the screen so could carry on quite safely rather than try and fix it in heavy rain.

So today I decided to tighten it up and do it properly, so I looked up the torque setting in the manual.

So the torque wrench isn't clicking and I had, for me, a lightbulb moment - 50lb ft is a force of 50 pounds at one foot all on a small M6 nut.

I hadn't read the manual properly - it was 37 to 52 LB inches so I was trying to tighten it to 12x what it should have been.

My only excuse is that I've never seen lb inches before.

This is an example of why I moved from Airliner Engineering to Accountancy and why I will continue to get my camper MOT'd. 

[Zed]

General torque setting are mostly based on the fitting size rather than the job they're doing. 50lb/ft on M6? Did it strip the nut thread?

[chad]

No - I never got to it as it seemed to be too much so I didn't force it.

I thought that my torque wrench must be faulty as it didn't click and then my brain started working...

[boris]

I sheared cylinder head bolts on a Tohatsu outboard once with not realising the torque was in foot ounces...
Fortunately they are M6 stainless bolts so now I just do them up until I can feel them stretch...

[chad]

There was the same 'confusion' in the metric settings - Newton Cm not Newton Metres.

Hopefully it's the sort of thing you only do once.