Dust suppression and Tyre rotation.

[AlanD]

Hi group,

Had occassion to remove the wheels from the Mondeo because the car picked up about 15 kgm of unsealed road surface that spread itself around the wheel arches and suspension members. Was because the local council had spread dust suppression fluid onto our unsealed road and that stuff goes like concrete when it gets thoroughly dry.

Rather pleased to find that the wheel lugs were not overtightened and the standard wheel brace was quite good enough to remove them. Since the wheels were off the car, swapped the fronts to the rear as per the manual.

Here be a couple of tips:

1. the torque setting for the nuts is 140 nm and this equates to 100 ft.lb. roughly, so if you press down on the brace end (which when extended is about 30 cm long) until you feel your weight coming off your feet, and you are an averaged sized chap, you will have about the correct torque, but the real advantage is that since it is only your weight providing the force it is not likely that you will seriously overtighten the lugs and you should always be able to undo them by pulling up on the wheel brace (a normal person can conservatively apply twice the force by pulling up than they can apply by pushing down).

2. I've positioned the security nut on all wheels in the same place relative to the logo on the blanking cap insert in the middle of the alloy wheel on all wheels. This way I can quickly check if a wheel has been taken off and replaced at a glance because it isn't likely that a mechanic will return every nut to each hub with the same relationship that they started with. So if you are paying for tyre rotations as part of a service you can quickly check if the wheels have been off the hubs.

If any one wants to know the conversion factor to convert nm to ft.lb. you multiply nm by 0.74 (or about 3/4). To go the other way multiply ft.lb by 1.36 (or roughly 4/3) to get NM.

Cheers