LBJ castle nut won't line up

I've torqued the lower ball joint nut On my 06 Tundra To 117 feet pounds Which is what I read Was correct But the castle nut is exactly in the way of the cotter pin. Do I tighten more to get it to line up or do I back it off until the hole shows? Once I back it off enough to show the hole then it is basically hand tight because I can wiggle the nut. I'm just afraid to tighten it too much and strip or break something.

 

Double-check that torque spec. I thought it was closer to 98 or 103 foot pounds.
Otherwise, I believe standard protocol is to tighten to expose next hole for cotter pin. That’s what I’ve always done. I don’t think you wanna loosen a bolt after tightening it down.

 

Verify spec. Always tighten more to line up, never loosen. It shouldn’t be more than 1/8 turn with any castle nut.

 

Tighten to the next hole even if it adds 10 ft-lbs. That's typical protocol.

 

As said above.


The specification is minimum torque. Once achieved tighten until cotter pin can be installed.

 

This is the place that I got the 117 ft lb spec. I did a search on the page here and someone else had posted this picture out of their manual. The castle hits dead center of the hole when I was at 117 lb and it felt like I was going to have to torque a lot more than 10 ft lb to get it to line up. Both sides were identical. I started to wonder if it was going to be safe to crank it that much more or if I needed to put a shim washer or something on it.

 

Verify torque, then turn the castle nut until it lines up. I did the same thing.

 

Well I thought I had verified the torque by looking at a manual but you'd also think that they'd specify that that torque wouldn't get the nut lined up or at least say torque until the pin hole lines up. I just didn't know if someone had a rock solid answer to what to do or if everyone just passed on the same rumors that they heard what to do

 

Careful what year FSM you're pulling from. Torque specs DO NOT match between years on all parts. For example, here's that same page, but from the '00-'03 FSM (your pic appears to be from '05-'06 FSM), note the TRE torque is the only one that matches from '03 to '06:

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The historical "universal" rule of thumb I was taught for castle/cotter:

• Verify torque
• Torque to that spec
• If necessary, tighten as needed to reach the next castle valley line-up for cotter insertion, which shouldn't be more than 1/6 - 1/8 turn
• If cotter has more than 1/4 - 1/3 of its mass sitting outside the top of a castle, evaluate why, not normal

The main reason to verify torque instead of using ugga-duggas is because some joints can be pinched too tight to operate properly if over-torqued. Overtightening isn't good. As long as you're not crazy over-spec, like 50%+ more than spec it shouldn't be a huge problem. You never want to be under-spec, but it's ok to be 10-20% over spec in most cases I've seen. I can't recall a time when anything failed because, for example, a fastener called for 100ftlb and I tightened to 120ftlb.

 

Awesome. I had my torquebwrench set to 117 and the castle was dead over the hole and I thought dang that's gonna require a good bit more and I don't need a snapped/stripped new lbj in my life right now lol. I torque everything to a number I trust it's source from. Except the axle nut. I got figures from right at 200lb + and my wrench only goes to 160 I think. I just wound up standing my 200lb self on the end of the wrench and called it good.

 

Also my truck is an 06 so I should be good on spec. I have an old physical manual for my 2000 but I'm not referring from it. It has the small ball joints anyways versus the large ones on my 06.

 

Got it, I misread your truck info. I saw 2000, and thought the "RIP" was actually linked to the 2006 because there's no space and RIP is on the same line. Pretty damn confusing.

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Lol gotcha. I guess I could put more of a space right there at the comma. Yea my 2000 had a kid pull out in front of me. It was a really well built truck and insurance didn't care about the 15k worth of aftermarket items so I kept it and will rebuild.

 

@shifty` there I put you a space.

 

More than anything, I think the comma is what clarifies more than the space. Your grasp of grammar is endearing.

Reversing the order is what'd really do it for me though.

 

Well to be fair I did put a comma which I thought would separate the two but I didn't put a space which I could have done. I'm not confident enough in my grammar to know 100% how signature details are supposed to be punctuated but I'll take anyone's word over mine when they have 23k+ posts hope you like the way my new signature reads easier