As part of trying to set ourselves up for not having to take the track bikes into a tyre shop every time we need new tyres, or for perhaps changing onto Wets on Wheels at the track, I’ve been buying some tools to enable me to do this.
Had a couple of stumbles… first specialist tool I bought to enable you to undo the front and rear axles on the Panigale didn’t work - the socket was too shallow for some reason, so bought a dedicated 55mm socket instead, great, but didn’t spot that it had a 3/4ths mount and so had to buy an adapter for that.
The adapter arrived today and unfortunately whilst my compact Makita impact driver has undone bolts before that couldn’t be undone with a breaker bar, it’s met its match with the Ducati and cannot loosen it. Bah.
Will try a breaker bar later, but am not expecting that to work, failing that I’ll have to either borrow or buy a heavyweight impact driver I think.
A 1/2" square drive should be good to 300 Nm, the Panigale axle nut is probably half of that.
Also:
1/4" square drive sockets generally range from 4 to 15 mm
3/8" square drive sockets generally range from 6 to 22 mm
1/2" square drive sockets generally range from 10 to 30 mm
3/4" square drive sockets generally range from 19 to 50 mm
1" square drive sockets generally range from 36 to 80 mm
Anything else is generally considered to be over or under sized.
The Makita was able to impact drive off the DRZ primary sprocket when a breaker bar wasn’t having any of it, so the Panigale axle must sure be on tight. It was last done up by a tyre shop in town. Hopefully it wasn’t over-tightened. They’re meant to be tightened to 230Nm.
A manufacturer would not over specify a torque setting, the higher the torque the longer the assembly time which is counter productive to production line efficiency. That aside too high a torque setting for the application will risk stripped threads, stretched bolts etc. Trust the manufacturer over random consensus.
I’m old school and struggle to visualise Nm (Newton Meters) so think in real money of lbf-ft (pounds force per foot) 230 Nm equals 170 lbf ft of torque which means that a 1m breaker bar will require a force of about 60 lbs to crack to crack that 230 Nm nut.
While waiting on delivery prep the threads with some of Euro Car Parts finest Triple QX maintenance fluid or reassuringly expensive WD40 if that’s what’s on the shelf and prep yourself with a couple of bouts of arm wrestling and three Shredded Wheats for breakfast.
When I was a spotty teenage apprentice I called a breaker bar a cracker bar , the logic being it’s used to crack threads, that got me the nick name Jacob
ps If @pricetta wins the arm wrestling invoke the first rule of fight club
@Jay surely scaffolding pole would have been your friend here vs. breaker bars?? Either way that spec sounds insane. How do you plan on tightening back to that??
I have a up to 300nm torque wrench. It’s quite long. I pray I am man enough for it. Failing that, I’ll throw it in the back of a trailer/van, admit defeat and take it to the dealer and ask them how they do it.
The 1m breaker bar arrived, and after much struggling, the technique was to put the front wheel back on, lower the bike to the ground, and wedge some things behind the rear wheel to stop it sliding back.
I was then able to do lean on the bar, pushing it down with some of my weight on it. No big crack, just a gentle loosening. Yay.
Freeeeee! Now to find an accommodating tyre shop to take the wheels to. My local BMW specialist wants an hours rate, so probably about £95. Err, no thanks.
That’s the plan. We bought these stands as they are transportable to the track. Eventually we’ll have tyre warmers and maybe even wets on wheels. Either way we’ll need the ability to remove wheels to take to the tyre stand at trackdays every now and then.
