Giant torque wrench in Raleigh/Durham

cj777

cj777

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 22, 2005
Location
Durham, NC
I'm picking up a trailer this weekend, so I'm trying to get my truck ready to haul it. My ball requires a 1 7/8" nut to be torqued to 450 ft lbs. Anyone know of any place that can do this or any tricks? A torque wrench that goes that high and a set of giant sockets is a little much to buy for one time use.
 
I've always just wrenched them down tight. I have a 2" ball that I installed with a pipe wrench on my benchtop vice, did it probably 10 years ago and have towed loaded car trailers probably a hundred times with it.
 
Can't say that I have ever actually torqued a trailer ball down, just got it "good and tight".

But if you want to be really close, assuming it is a 1-1/4" shank ball, in a drawbar, put it in the hitch sideways, grab a 24" adjustable or pipe wrench, if you weigh anywhere close to 225lbs, then your body weight at the end of that wrench will be approximately 450ftlbs at the nut. If you weigh less, then extend it with a cheater pipe. Then give it a little "jump" for good measure.

If you decide to apply loctite, it acts as a lubricant before it sets up, so you can decrease the needed torque by 20-25% in that case, only requiring 340ftlbs or so.

Another suggestion, instead of body weight, use the same idea as I listed first, but put a bathroom scale on a floor jack then the wrench on top of that(maybe with a piece of plywood to spread out the load so the end of the wrench doesn't damage the scale). 24" wrench would need 225lbs to hit 450ftlbs, 18" wrench would need 300lbs.
 
yeah man our shop is on 15-501 outside of Chapel Hill I can impact it on anytime for you if you stop by
 
braxton357 said:
You may be the first person in the history of automobiles to have ever used a tq wrench on a trailer hitch.
Click to expand...

:lol: I can be a bit anal about things when them failing would be catastrophic. Sounds like the consensus is that a 2ft pipe wrench will do the job, so I'll pick one up on the way home today. Thanks for the advice everyone.
 
I agree with all the other post! But just for info, when I worked at an Equipment Rental Store, they had a Rather large torque wrench, & their called Torque Multipliers. Usually 2-3 pieces, the main head with 1" drive, & gauge, & at least 1 handle, about 5' long. Seems like it would go up around 1200 ft. lb.s.. That be for tightening some Big GO-Nads! :gitrdun:
 
rodney eppes said:
I agree with all the other post! But just for info, when I worked at an Equipment Rental Store, they had a Rather large torque wrench, & their called Torque Multipliers. Usually 2-3 pieces, the main head with 1" drive, & gauge, & at least 1 handle, about 5' long. Seems like it would go up around 1200 ft. lb.s.. That be for tightening some Big GO-Nads! :gitrdun:
Click to expand...

We have several of those in the shop I work in. We torque flanges to 1000+ ft-lbs all the time. When we get into the big stuff we get out the hydraulic torque wrenches. They put out upwards of 10,000 ft-lbs.
 
Hokie_YJ said:
We have several of those in the shop I work in. We torque flanges to 1000+ ft-lbs all the time. When we get into the big stuff we get out the hydraulic torque wrenches. They put out upwards of 10,000 ft-lbs.
Click to expand...
Im familar with the hydro ones its scary when the book calls for 8000 ftlbs of tq and you hear everything groaning when torquing it

sent by telegraph from my k30
 
Put the hitch in the reciever sideways so you can put the pipe wrench and bar on it. Then stand on it and you'll have it.
 
I'm trying to comprehend why they have that high of a torque spec in the first place.
 
My stepdad taught me a neat trick. If you're unsure on a threaded torque, take a punch and damage a thread next to the nut underneath after you tighten it. It will never come off.
But I weld the nut on all of mine so that they are permanant to the removable tongue and have different setups for different trucks so they usually stay put. And I use a breaker and cheater to torque initially.
 
Ron said:
I'm trying to comprehend why they have that high of a torque spec in the first place.
Click to expand...
1-1/4" shank, 450lbs is actually very very low, considering a grade 5 1-1/4"-12 bolt is rated for 1241 ftlbs, grade 8 would be good for 2012ftlbs.

6BangBronk said:
My stepdad taught me a neat trick. If you're unsure on a threaded torque, take a punch and damage a thread next to the nut underneath after you tighten it. It will never come off.
But I weld the nut on all of mine so that they are permanant to the removable tongue and have different setups for different trucks so they usually stay put. And I use a breaker and cheater to torque initially.
Click to expand...
I am not sure how a tac weld or a deformed thread has anything at all to do with an unknown torque value. The specified torque values are typically specified to achieve a particular tension on the bolt, the tension in turn provides a clamping force. This is what allows say the weight of a vehicle to ride on the full face of the mounting surface of the wheel and the hub face, rather than exerting the force on the studs themselves or the hub diameter, or say the proper compression on a sealing surface. The added friction of the nut itself on the mounting surface due to the same tension is simply a byproduct and can be achieved at a much lower torque/tension than may be needed to achieve the intended purpose. In the case of this hitch ball, your idea works, but it would not be suitable for many other applications.
 
Last edited:
GCncsuHD said:
1-1/4" shank, 450lbs is actually very very low, considering a grade 5 1-1/4"-12 bolt is rated for 1241 ftlbs, grade 8 would be good for 2012ftlbs.
Click to expand...

Yeah but why would you ever have that kind of force between the nut and bolt?
Obviously you don't want the nut to wiggle off, but that only requires a decent lock washer and being "tight".
 
RatLabGuy said:
Yeah but why would you ever have that kind of force between the nut and bolt?
Obviously you don't want the nut to wiggle off, but that only requires a decent lock washer and being "tight".
Click to expand...
See above post. We are kind of on the same page with the "only requires a decent lock washer and being tight" to keep it from wiggling off. The specified torque has little to do with keeping the fastener tight, and more to do with applying the correct tension on the bolt. Obviously that is not important in this particular application, hence the torque value WAY under the ability of the 1-1/4" bolt, but in other applications it is important.
 
OK so since this thread is pretty much dead anyway...

Here is a curious question.
Should (or is?) the appropriate torque for a bolt used in a particular application be related to the thread pitch of the fastener? And/or the size of the head?
Here is my thinking. A very fine pitch thread means that it takes a longer radial turn of the nut for the surfaces of the nut & bolt to separate. Likewise a steep thread disconnects very quickly. Hence fine bolts are generally taken to have more "holding power".
J-spec metric bolts tend to be finer pitch, but also smaller head than a comparable E-spec metric of the same size shaft (e.g. M10)...
 
The head of the bolt has nothing at all to do with the tension you can apply to the bolt via torque.

Thread pitch does have to do with the applied tension per applied torque, but in many cases is deemed negligible for real life purposes, the variance in torque wrenches is at times larger than that.

Fine threaded bolts do have more "holding power" due to the fine thread pitch creating more surface area (stress area) to divide the stress along the threads, but this is not related to the tension it will hold, as it should be assumed the material you are threading into meets or exceeds the tensile strength and therefore thread shear strength of the bolt threads. If not then your tension and subsequent torque values are governed by the material to be threaded into, not the bolt itself.

The reason the torque values for a fine threaded fastener tend to be higher, is because for a given bolt diameter, a fine thread has a larger minor diameter than a coarse thread (easy to see by looking at it). The tensile strength is determined by the minor diameter of a the bolt, as that is where failure will occur.

The finer thread pitch simply allows more radial distance to "fine tune" the tension on the bolt.
 
Back
Top