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Side Case Bolt Torque Spec

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sentinel
  • Start date Start date
This is scary. Why in the world would anyone use a foot pound torque wrench on such wimpy bolts?
 
And now I need to know what the torque spec is for the "Governor Bolt".

The nearly worthless shop manual gives a ridiculously wide range from 9.5 to 16.5 lbs. f.

I'm thinking on just going with 12 lbs. f and no more.

I'd go with the 9.5 and no more.

WTF is a governor bolt?


Why are you even using a worthless manual?
 
This is scary. Why in the world would anyone use a foot pound torque wrench on such wimpy bolts?

The foot-pound torque wrench I have is good from 5 lbs. and up, and is accurate to within 1 or 2 ponds at its worse form what I can tell, which is good enough.
 
Yes, this is the best I could find so far and yes it is crankcase bolts from the Suzuki Shop Manual for the 250T-300Lz which, FYI applies to the GSX400 The GSX 400 manual is simply an addendum to this where differences occur.

View attachment 22417

But Really, aren't the screws that hold the clutchcover and Stator Cover
SCREWS, not "bolts"? You use a screwdriver to put em on, so they are screws...After all this isn't carpentry so there shouldn't be any confusion.
Personally, I'm in Tkents camp.I have never used a torque wrench on a screw, but I've murdered a few with impact drivers using a phillips head bit, and when I put new ones in, I just give them a tap with an impact driver...just so the gasket doesn't leak.

Still, I think I saw a torque for a screw in here somewhere and it was 1-2ft/bs .I'm trying to find it again.
 
I'd go with the 9.5 and no more.

WTF is a governor bolt?


Why are you even using a worthless manual?
I haven't got down to that bolt yet, but from what I can tell it's a pretty strong bolt. It may be a 10mm, and should be able to take at least 12 lbs. f of torque or so.

It's called the "Advance Governor". It's part of the ignition system located behind the round plate located on the right end of the crank.

I have the official Suzuki manual, the Haynes, and the Clymer, and all three are one worse than the next; crap writing and crap editing.
 
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Yes, this is the best I could find so far and yes it is crankcase bolts from the Suzuki Shop Manual for the 250T-300Lz which, FYI applies to the GSX400 The GSX 400 manual is simply an addendum to this where differences occur.

View attachment 22417

But Really, aren't the screws that hold the clutchcover and Stator Cover
SCREWS, not "bolts"? You use a screwdriver to put em on, so they are screws...After all this isn't carpentry so there shouldn't be any confusion.
Personally, I'm in Tkents camp.I have never used a torque wrench on a screw, but I've murdered a few with impact drivers using a phillips head bit, and when I put new ones in, I just give them a tap with an impact driver...just so the gasket doesn't leak.

Still, I think I saw a torque for a screw in here somewhere and it was 1-2ft/bs .I'm trying to find it again.

No, those are the actual bolts that hold the two halves of the crankcase together. I'm not splitting the case, just removing and reinstalling the right hand crankcase "cover". In either case they are most definitely "bolts" and not "scews". You are the one that's confused here, but thanks for trying to help anyways.
 
Yes, I know what you are looking for-I am trying to find if there is such a thing as a torque for them...

Ok Found it...it must be the NUMBERS here that are the clue that place them around the casing?...this is on page 42 of the GSX400E in the middle of the book.

View attachment 22418


N-M is first, kg/m second. Not ft lbs in THIS table.
 
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Yes, I know what you are looking for-I am trying to find if there is such a thing as a torque for them...

Ok Found it...it must be the NUMBERS here that are the clue that place them around the casing?...this is on page 42 of the GSX400E in the middle of the book.

View attachment 22418
See, now you're beginning to feel my pain! lol

Those are not the crankcase side case bolts, those are the actually crankcase bolts being referred to there! lol

See how horribly written and edited these manuals are?
 
and just to repost that, because I edited above

"N-M" is listed first in order, "kg/m" is listed second. Not ft lbs in THIS table.
I fear to try to compress the whole page to attach here. 19kb limit isn't much
 
I haven't got down to that bolt yet, but from what I can tell it's a pretty strong bolt. It may be a 10mm, and should be able to take at least 12 lbs. f of torque or so.

How much it "can take" and how much it needs to do it's job are two entirely different things. All it's doing is holding on a little hunk of metal on the end of a crankshaft. Not a whole lot of force involved. Why would you want to find out how much it "can take"? None of these bolts need to be as tight as they "can take". If they did Suzuki would have used a bigger bolt and put it in under less stress.

I have noticed on the KTMs they typically use one size smaller fasteners than Suzuki would use in any given application. Weight saving I guess. Their torque specs are an exact number of Newton-Meters, not a wide range like 16 - 28 or whatever. Coincidence? I think not. The bolts when properly torqued are closer to the failure point. You have to use a torque wrench, you can't guess that closely.

It's really nice to never break off bolts or strip out bolt holes anymore. It took me a long time to get to that point. Trust the fasteners. They work, even without being in as tight as they can go.
 
See, now you're beginning to feel my pain! lol

Those are not the crankcase side case bolts, those are the actually crankcase bolts being referred to there! lol

See how horribly written and edited these manuals are?


Oh yes, I get it but there may not be torque values for screws...I am just going on the 6mm value because it's as close as I can get so far
 
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Oh yes, I get it but there may not be torque values for screws...I am just going on the 6mm value because it's as close as I can get so far
I think I'm just going to torque them at 5 lbs f. and call it good. If the bolts feel strained as I'm gong I'll just stop there before I get to 5, but I think they'll be ok to 5; we'll see.
 
Well, I'm down to removing the spring-bolts, springs, and plates right now, and then the joy of reassembly. I'll be sure to use a relatively conservative amount of torque force on those bolts. I'll report back with how it went.
 
The length of them might be important...I'm inferring this from my second attachment.

Yes, many of them are indeed different lengths, so I laid them out accordingly.

I just got the new plates and springs installed. I'll tell you that truing to get the bolts back into mounting the springs was a real pain.

Now I've just got to torque them, and then it's time to finish the reassembly. So far so good.
 
Well after around 12+ straight hours of work I've got it all done. The damn oil housing studs and nuts were stripped so luckily I had some spar suds and nuts and was able to repair it.

So up all night with no sleep at all, and now I'm too tired for a test drive. I'll tell you what though, that clutch pull is seriously heavy now. This should be interesting. After I get some sleep I'll bne taking it out for a test ride.

Oh, and no stripped nuts or bolts with the clutch work!
 
The damn oil housing studs and nuts were stripped so luckily I had some spar suds and nuts and was able to repair it.

Yeah those are always stripped because people insist on using torque wrenches on them.
 
I was very careful not to over tighten them and of course never use a torque wrench on them. When I went to replace the studs the new ones from the factory bad threads and would not work. You can imagine how ****ed off I was after a night like that than this! Thankfully I had order 3 more as backups a few years ago that I had forgotten all about until I found them frantically searching this morning, and thankfully they were in perfect working order. I know better to only ever snug those nuts finger tight after learning differently the hard way years ago.

Well, I've just gotta clean up my terrible mess all over the garage and then off I go for a test ride; I hope it even works! lol
 
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