Expand Quote
Anybody ever used a torque wrench for tightening the trucks? What id the order of magnitude of moment which is typical for tightening a kingpin? I am thinking of buying a wrench but I don't know the Nm range which would be suitable. I touched my kingpin and now I can't get my trucks feeling equal again (especially when they harden up a bit in cold weather) and it drives me insane and this might give me peace of mind.
It couldn’t hurt to establish a baseline, but my feeling is that the bushings distort and change the feel of trucks so quickly that the measurements might not be useful for long.
since you have two factors contributing to the amount of force to turn the nut, you will likely not get meaningful results out of the repeatability offered.
1. On a conventional kingpin, damaged threads will require more force to turn the nut
2. Over time the bushings will deteriorate. When using the torque wrench, the reaction force from this will result in repeatable reads on the wrench, but this is also misleading because it is a Static event. If there are tears in the bushing, the force it can return to the hangar will vary due to the change in structure. The turn/lean is a dynamic event and the bushing may behave differently in a turn, even if it is subject to the same amount of dynamic compression indicated by the torque wrench.
The best way to get consistency out of trucks to skate stuff that is new, and set up the same way.
One thing I've found that really speeds this up, to where the truck feels identical to the previous broken in pair, is to disassemble the truck, clean all of the parts of the manufacturing lubricant, and reassemble with whatever you want.
I would also recommend doing this to replacement urethane bushings to remove the mold-release agent.
Cheers