It's the method that's been used for years.

Reminds me of the time a couple of years ago when I took my son's Fiesta to have the tracking adjusted for the umpteenth time (it was always being knocked out of alignment). I had successfully used the national chain several times. This chain had a long running half price offer. I turned up and the usual manager wasn't there. The relief manager looked a little put out when I produced the voucher and said he wouldn't be able to honour it if he needed to use heat. Fine I said, knowing it was well under a year since it was last adjusted and couldn't have seized. Guess what?

Haven't been back since.

Hi

I’ve recently had my car tracking done but the jam nut was seized on the tie-rod, the mechanic used a blow lamp to heat the nut, then when he started to turn it he gave it a squirt of WD40

It did the trick, but would this have damaged or hardened the tie-rod with the WD40 cooling the metal too quickly?

will this cause the tie-rod to fail?

No chance of that, the nut and tie rod would need to be heated to above red heat and quenched in cold brine to seriously affect mechanical properties.

I doubt that a blow lamp would be capable of that, oxy-acetylene torch would but would have unfortunate side effects on the other nearby parts of the car, not ruling out fire.

I was guessing that the "blowlamp" was probably in fact oxyacetylene, because my impression is that garages mostly use oxyacetylene for this kind of job.

Presumably they don't have too many catastrophic fires, though I once had a very close shave myself using oxyacetylene to weld a box section that I hadnt realised had a plastic petrol pipe running through it.

From an inspection pit, already. Hopefully a pro wouldn't make such a mistake.

If the "blowlamp" was in fact a blowtorch,(using atmospheric oxygen as its oxidant, which MIGHT be a working definition of the term) then I'd agree that significant temper changes are probably unlikely.

Edited by edlithgow on 21/03/2024 at 01:18