Timken has some good stuff. They screwed up the adjustment page (you can't see all of the instructions) but I managed to pull them out. I see that I missed the final step in my Workshop manual about tightening to 17 in-lbs. Must be why I went with finger tight when I did mine. They weren't new anyway. p.s. "finger tight means as tight as you can possibly turn it with your fingers.

You could also make your own 17 lb weight and place it on your wrench one inch away from the spindle center. Or use that to mentally calibrate your fingers.

 

Or, 17 in-lbs equals 1.4 ft-lbs. Put a 1.4 lb weight at the end of a foot long wrench and you're there.

Or, use a fish scale to pull on a one foot wrench. Same result.

 

Don't these "put a weight on a tool" options only work if you can magically have the wrench at 3:00 position.
What good is it when the nut has bottomed out with finger tension and the wrench fall at a position not 3:00?

A 12 point socket will be helpful, but it will likely not be exactly at 3:00 where the weight hanging from a wrench be the exact torque....taking it right back to the "go by feel" torque.

 

Move the wrench. Accept a small error. Use the fish scale instead, orientation doesn't matter. Realize that the original spec. was 2 newton-meters. Not super precise.

A Ford engineer probably asked "about how tight is finger tight in newton-meters?"...another probably answered "I'd guess 2 newton-meters". 2 is one significant figure. It looks more precise after conversion, but it started as 2. Some specs. are just written because they have to put a number down. 20,000 miles later, that nut is probably loose, just due to wear.

 

Using a fish scale on rotor to set bearing pre-load directly, instead of via a torque setting, is what i did on jap vehicle.... Following the factory manual.

I got a set of beam torque wrenches, had them since high school. In fact more than half of my ratchet type toolset was purchased in high school with money from my summer job. It's come in handy over almost 40 years. Fair investment.

 

I know how a lb of hamburger feels but a zip lock with a pint of water is ABOUT 16 oz. (I could do the math.)

Now,.a beam torque wrench (at 3 o'clock! &#128579 sees.its own weight included. Add a lb weight at 1 ft of an 8 oz wrench and 1/2 of the 8 oz must be included... you have 16oz.+ 8/2 oz = 20 oz. 1.25 ft lbs or 20 inch oz OR oz inches. Same-O.

 

I'm trying to see the relationship of a wrench when cooking my hamburgers for dinner.

 

I don't know why I didn't get notification emails, or at least ONE, after the responses above, but I didn't get any. I'm pretty diligent about acknowledging. In any case I did find a rental torque wrench at Autozone that started at 20 inch pounds (It was mailed to me, brand new in the box still wrapped in plastic!). I did the tightening routine - tighten to 30 pounds, back of two turns, tighten 24 pounds, back off 175 degrees, then tighten 17 inch pounds actually 20 inch pounds. I backed off a tiny bit after the last tightening. Hey, if the bearings on a 23-year old truck can tell the difference between 17 and 20 inch pounds they're probably in a world of their own.

Thanks all for your responses. I didn't ignore you all, just didn't know you had responded.

 

Especially how you backed off the nut just a little after the last tightening. Like a pro that the truck deserves.

 

Dad would pack his wheel bearings every 25,000 mi, each 2 years. They'd get adjusted, then. In between, jacked up once and grabbing the top and bottom of the wheel, checked for any slop.