How to Torque Lug Nuts

Video Transcript

"NATHAN MCCULLOUGH: Hi, my name is Nate McCullough on behalf of Expert Village. In these clips, we're going to talk about the proper way to perform a five-wheel tire rotation. In this clip, we're going to talk about the proper way to torque your vehicle's lug nuts. We have a vehicle sitting on the ground which of course is necessary for our torquing procedure. Pretty much just pick a bolt. Okay, we're going to start with the bottom lug nut, and we're going to use the five-point star torquing procedure. We're going to go from here to here to here to here to here. As you can see, I pretty much drew a five-pointed star. What that will do is make sure that we torque the wheel flat and true. This is an aluminum rim. Once you're done torquing the lug nuts down, you're going to want to drive the vehicle for 25 miles and then recheck them for proper torque. The torque spec on this is going to be 140 pounds, and by experience, that's approximately as hard as the average man can pull with one hand. Right there, it's good enough, and go up here. It is extremely common for people to overtighten lug nuts. They're actually damaging rims, treads and the lug nuts themselves. If you're unsure about how tight to tighten them, your local parts store will have a torque wrench that you can purchase. All right, and this is our last lug nut right there. And as I said, after 25 miles of driving on aluminum rims only, recheck. You are going to want to repeat the procedure for the rest of the vehicle's wheels."