Laser's Torque Angle Gauge - from Halfords

[RustyNuts]

First of all thanks to those who replied in my thread about head bolt lubricating in the ask a shiter forum - i appreciated your help. Despite having a bad experience with a halfords torque wrench in the past, i had to get another in a hurry so ended up with another one.. and a replacement one for the original - now two of the fuckers lol.

Anyway I also bought a laser torque angle gauge from them recently.

So today there i am fretting about torqing up 12 bolts to 20Nm and then 60. I kid you not the heart was pounding with stress at one point. I'm glad to say that went perfectly well... however the fucking angle gauge was a right sod.

One bolt to 130 degrees... and then the fucking thing FELL APART IN MY HAND!

Yeah you got it right, it really literally did - despite a snap ring, the fucking thing literally fell apart in my hand as i'm removing it from my breaker bar to reset and re position it. Proof:

 

So with just one bolt done up, i've ended up leaving it in that state for 20-30 minutes while i argue with halfords that i need to finish this asap and plead with them to replace it by taxi. You might lol at that last bit but i had no way of getting to them in a timely manner while avoiding the head becoming distorted.

So by the time a couple of lengthy phone calls have happened and some quarrelling, I've then had to undo the entire lot.

Where do i stand now? The bolts are stretch bolts / TTY and now they've been torqued, one has been angled and under that the head gasket has been compressed.

Presumably i'm now going to have to scrap £138 of parts and start over? - and skim the head again probably too?

Tomorrow is going to be a horrible day arguing with them about this.

Please advise...

Thanks.

[Fraz]

Honest answer? Your unlikely to have Halfrauds replace a torque wrench and pay for a new gasket, bolts and a gasket without proof and a legal arguement involving solicitors. 

 

In hindsight you could have continued on using the leftover angle plate as a guide to at least get the job finished.

 

Re the head and gasket. Someone with more experience than me will probably know better but if it was me. I’d nip into Halfrauds, get a new angle torque wrench and just redo all the bolts again and crack on with the job. If you really wanted to be super careful you could replace that bolt but the rest are unlikely to have distorted without the final angle torque. 
 

Again, I’m an amateur so someone may come along and prove me wrong. But I’d fall over sideways if one bolt being torqued would bend a head requiring skimming. 

[Mr Pastry]

3 hours ago, Fraz said:

Re the head and gasket. Someone with more experience than me will probably know better but if it was me. I’d nip into Halfrauds, get a new angle torque wrench and just redo all the bolts again and crack on with the job. If you really wanted to be super careful you could replace that bolt but the rest are unlikely to have distorted without the final angle torque. 
 

Again, I’m an amateur so someone may come along and prove me wrong. But I’d fall over sideways if one bolt being torqued would bend a head requiring skimming. 

This all makes sense.  The initial torque will not stretch the bolts significantly, and anyway the head gasket will not be fully compressed until the engine has got hot so just crack on.  You can judge the angles  well enough just by looking at the protractor, you don't need the whole gadget and there will be a tolerance on the figures anyway.   Modern heads do not distort so easily, and a lot get skimmed unnecessarily.  It'll be fine.

[SiC]

I'd have put the degrees circle paper over the socket and drawn a line on the socket to use as a pointer. 

[juular]

Agree with others. I wouldn't worry about it. Crack on!

Bit shit about the angle gauge though. 

[RustyNuts]

1 hour ago, SiC said:

I'd have put the degrees circle paper over the socket and drawn a line on the socket to use as a pointer. 

That's not a bad idea.

[JMotor]

1 hour ago, juular said:

Agree with others. I wouldn't worry about it. Crack on!

Bit shit about the angle gauge though. 

1+ 

Got the same gauge too and it's a PITA at the best of times to use. 

[sierraman]

Odd, Lasers stuff is generally ok. 

[Rust Collector]

I bought one of those gauges to do the HG on my mk2 Golf about 12-13 years ago - had a similar problem from memory, it was a pain in the arse to use and I ended up using my laser guided eyeball to do the angular tightening (which I wouldn't recommend). When I did the Favorit HG I used a protractor and a paint pen, I marked the bolts and a start and finish point on the head. I did the same on the crank of my brother's DCi Clio recently which is also a stretch bolt. Everything is still running happily. In an ideal world an angular torque wrench would be the way forward, but money etc.

My unprofessional advice is to mark up the angles on the remaining bolts and as others have suggested carry on. I wouldn't waste time/energy arguing with Halfords either, other than just asking for a refund on the angle gauge.

[colino]

Get your refund from Halfords and make up your own cardboard protractor.   I do agree the parts are garbage, but all is not lost yet.

[RoverFolkUs]

Unless it's some sort of performance engine I'd just eyeball it with some paint marks. Yes that's not ideal but 130° give or take 5° wouldn't hurt it. 

130° is a 1/4 turn and another just under 1/8 turn, so not overly complex to do by eye.

It's not ideal and you  shouldn't do that but I've done it before and it's been fine, and the job got done after all

[Jikovron]

Is it possible to boop it back together and be somewhat judicious with the fragile thing for the rest of the task? 

[RustyNuts]

Problem i have is budget. The head gasket and bolts cost me £138, then there is coolant and oil...

If i re-use the same parts and they're already damaged, i'll end up with another HG failure and even more coolant / oil / skimming / parts to have to do - and it'll be another spat with Halfords.

[Dave_Q]

This seems like an excessive level of panic. 

FYI not all torque + angle bolts are stretch or torque to yield, it's just a more precise way of getting a consistent bolt load. 

If these are M10 or M12 then 20Nm + 60° is probably not yield.

In this situation I would do nothing other than to retorque again following the right pattern. 

I also would have eyeballed the 60° though so don't neccesarily listen to me

[Fraz]

1 hour ago, RustyNuts said:

Problem i have is budget. The head gasket and bolts cost me £138, then there is coolant and oil...

If i re-use the same parts and they're already damaged, i'll end up with another HG failure and even more coolant / oil / skimming / parts to have to do - and it'll be another spat with Halfords.

Honestly, they won’t be damaged. Just crack on and finish the job. I’ll bet it’ll be alright. 
 

If you wanted to be super duper safe you could replace that one bolt but personally - I wouldn’t bother 

[twosmoke300]

If it uses hex bolts or E torx just go just over 2 flats or two splines on each one . Can’t remember the last time I used an angle gauge .

[RustyNuts]

1 hour ago, Dave_Q said:

This seems like an excessive level of panic. 

FYI not all torque + angle bolts are stretch or torque to yield, it's just a more precise way of getting a consistent bolt load. 

If these are M10 or M12 then 20Nm + 60° is probably not yield.

In this situation I would do nothing other than to retorque again following the right pattern. 

I also would have eyeballed the 60° though so don't neccesarily listen to me

You've misunderstood. It's 20Nm, then 60Nm and then 130°.

Not 20Nm and 60°.

[wuvvum]

I have to say that for bolts that need angle tightening I usually just do it by eye - it's not generally necessary to get the angle right to the nearest degree, or even 5 degrees.

One thing that did puzzle me when I did the Felicia head though - I always thought that after replacing a head gasket you were supposed to retorque the head bolts after 1,000 miles or whatever, but I'm not sure how that would work with angle tightening as you have no idea what the final torque is actually supposed to be.

[RustyNuts]

With Volvo lumps they don't mention this, nor do you do any timed crap malarky either. Just torque up and go.

But what i'm worried about is having now released all the bolts, will that one that was turned 130 now be wasted?

[Dave_Q]

1 hour ago, RustyNuts said:

You've misunderstood. It's 20Nm, then 60Nm and then 130°.

Not 20Nm and 60°.

So then they may be TTY but my answer remains the same, I would re-torque and carry on