When I was taking off the rear wheel I mistakenly removed the 5 flange nuts (have little indents on the sides) on the star shaped piece that has the rear wheel drive splines. Now gonna have to put them back on.
I have two issues:
1. Don't know the proper torque for these guys. Any ideas?
2. These nuts don't want to thread back on nicely. They lock up after a couple of turns and I'm afraid of damaging some threads on the bolts. Anyone taken them off before and experienced this?
No, you should have left those on. The pins are already threaded into the flange piece, so these are locknuts. They are indented to deliberately distort the threads so they won't easily loosen up. (they were a bi tch to get off, right).
You have some choices...
Put them back on. They will go on hard. Don't know exact torque.. "good-n-tight" will work.
Or replace them with Nylon insert locknuts. That's what I used on a used replacement flange I got on-line, whose seller had also inadvertently removed them.
Don't use lockwashers and standard nuts as there is close clearances around there and the nuts will stick out too far.
Personally I think the torque value is not critical. They are not prone to loosening anyway. Hold the pins by the flat sides with a backup wrench so you don't loosen the pins while tightening the locknuts.
Hahaha, you said it. A real bitch to take off. Thanks for the recommendations! Would it also work to just go buy some fresh serrated flange nuts and then wrench them down with a bit of blue loc-tite?
I'm offering an opinion, not a warranty, but standard nuts with blue locktite would satisfy me. Could use red too, since you will never be removing these again, ever. Use special Moly 77 paste on reassembly of the splined parts.
