Quote:
Originally Posted by TIGGER
.... I mean this "the drain plug will vibrate out" nonsense is ridiculous IMHO...
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Actually, there are a couple of areas that bikes are different. Mostly vibration, which can cause parts to vibrate out. However if the parts are installed correctly, that is threads are clean and good and the bolts are at the correct tension they will stay in place under normal circumstances. When circumstances are not normal, other measures need to be taken, such as safety wire seen on airplanes and race vehicles or a chemical thread lock if it is something that doesn't get routinely unscrewed. In the case of 2-stroke race bikes, maybe both. I almost always use a torque wrench on oil drain plugs and oil filters, as well as everything else that my life depends on.
Too little and they will vibrate loose, too much and they can crack due to vibration, or destroy the threads.
If the banjo bolt is good (I have had some of them over the years that were bad...) and properly torqued the worse that that will happen, even if the washer is hard as a rock, is a slight weeping wetness around the seal, not a sudden catastrophic failure. And even then the place to look for the problem is the banjo bolt usually. If the banjo was installed with a torque wrench you would see a "mushy" reading, or an inability to pull it to the correct number even though the threads look good. In that case look for a cracked banjo bolt. They can cause a sudden loss of pressure. Lucky that most of the time you feel it when tightening them, or the bastards just break, which is good. Then you know you have to replace it with no ambiguity.