I got my fstb and was tightening it to 30lb/ft, and one of the studs broke! I was going until it clicked, but one of them broke before it clicked. Did I get a bad torque wrench???? Is the car safe to drive to a mechanic? How much is this going to set me back?

 

If you removed those stud nuts you had some idea of how tight they were. Did you tighten them much more than that?

Do you have a bad torque wrench?!? There's no way anyone can give an accurate answer at a distance. Compare your wrench to other wrenches, and expect equal readings.

The car is safe to drive to a mechanic. I have no idea how much your mechanic will charge. Labor rates vary from place to place. I'd guess he should charge you for one hour but maybe he wants to make a big deal out of this.

 

If it's the strut nuts(one of the three), then it's gonna take more than just one hour to replace that stud(unless that mechanic is extremely fast). The strut probably has to come out to remove the hat that the studs are fixed to. That means taking the spring off also. It's more like 2-3 hours work start to finish.

Wheel stud however should be about 1 hour if he's slow.

 

When I installed my FSTB I didn't have a torque wrench. I put back approximately the same torque that my hands felt when I took those nuts off, and used a little bit of my sense of force/torque (not too good but so called). Been several months so far, looks OK.

 

Jeff is right. In order to fix this problem, the whole spring/shock assembly has to be taken out. The same thing happened to me. I drove around with it for about 6 months without any problems. I don't suggest doing what I did, but just to ease your mind a lil. Get it fixed.

 

Naaaa, it should only take him an hour at most. Without air tools, I can have the entire strut assembly out of the car in about 20 minutes. All it takes is jacking up the car, pulling off the wheel, marking the lower strut to the knuckle (to keep alignment true), removing the two lower strut bolts on the knuckle, pop the brake line off the strut housing, removing the upper strut nuts, and she's out. Then compress the spring, remove the upper strut shaft nut and pull out the damaged upper strut bolt plate and swap a new one in.

Like I said, if I can do this in an hour without air tools, he should be able to do the same.


Dave

 

It was one of the 3 on either side, so it'll take a while. No, I didn't tighten then very much at all. I did them all about the same, and the click at 30lbft seemed to come quicker than I expected rather than tighter than I thought. I just went to the mechanic, and all that we can figure is that it was a bad bolt. He says they should be able to handle well over 50 lbft. He looked around, including at the wrench. He said with alignment it'll be $166. That's for 1.9 hours of labor, $28 part, and $45 for alignment. I guess in a weird way this is good because it probably would have happened anyway. ugh. He can't do it until after I was going to go on a 400 mile round trip, but said as long as I stay under 90 I should be fine. That kind of scares me, but this mechanic has served our family well over the years. I went ahead and took the fstb off. I'm wondering if it would hurt to have that on for the trip, and if it would possibly put more stress on the 2 remaining bolts, or if I should wait until I get back and it's all fixed. I think I'll just wait. Anyway, thanks for the help.