No matter what I do I can't seem to tighten the castle nut on the front wheels. It's always etither too loose or too tight. I tried using one of those cheap old school torque wrenches but no joy.....What is the trick here?

too tight? how can you make it too tight? i make them about as tight as i can get them (not including jumping on my 3 foot pipe extension) and have had no issues.

I've had this problem before, and it turned out that the threads were damaged on the spindle. This prevented the castle nut from tightening past a certain point, although it felt "tight". The problem probably developed because someone had not packed the bearings correctly, and the extra slop damaged the threads.

The way to verify this is to remove the spindle, and thread the castle nut onto it.

Other than that, it's pretty straightforward. If the bearing is good and pressed in evenly, and the threads are good, it's just a matter of the correct torque on the castle nut.

good luck, John

I get em too tight and they make noise.

With regards too, "Grossgary's" post, which sounds like he has lots of experience with torquing front main castle nuts, ...... he must use his Calibrated Elbow with an unknown tolerance with a cheater bar so that kind of tells me... if it works for him and hasn't failed, don't sweat the small stuff and put the torque on the high side of the ball park, align the castle nut for the cotter pin and it will be fine.

 

My .o2 cents. (hope that addresse's your thoughts.)

john made a good call above, he must have something preventing the nut from actually bolting up as much as it should. threads bunged up or something. he should be able to check the threads or nut for damage.

 

the axle is cast iron so no worries about stripping it like aluminum stuff(it is possible, but would require some serious effort), that's why i just crank 'em down nearly as hard as i can.

On my first Subaru, I had a hard time with a wheel I just couldn't get torqued right, and I finally noticed a ridge on the cone washer. Since then I've seen several more like that. They tend to get a 1/16 to 1/8 inch ridge on them, and then you're applying torque, but not where you think you are. The good news is that it's easy to remove the ridge by filing it down.

The flat washer that goes to the outside of the cone washer has a slight curve to it, i forget which side the curve has to be to, but i'm pretty sure it needs to be curved in. That could also be your culprit.

Actually, the "flat" washer has to be curved OUT. If you look really carefully, you might even see that the washer has "OUT" stamped on the side that is supposed to be out.