Just realized I've been torquing head bolts the hard way for 3 years

Last week I was helping a buddy swap a head gasket on his 7.3 Powerstroke out in his garage near Tulsa. I grabbed my torque wrench and started doing the bolts in a simple circle pattern like I always did. He stopped me and said I was asking for a warped head doing it that way. He showed me the proper criss-cross sequence from the center out, working in stages. I felt like an idiot because I've been working on diesels for over a decade and nobody ever corrected me. Tried his method on the reassembly and the head sat way flatter when I checked with a straightedge. Has anyone else picked up a basic habit wrong for years and only learned the right way from someone calling you out?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_reese1d ago

That's exactly how it goes with a lot of stuff in life, not just tools or truck work. It's like everyone learns a shortcut or a wrong method early on, and you just keep doing it because nobody ever says anything. Then one day someone calls you out and it's like a light switch flips in your head. Same thing happened to me with how I was sharpening my pocket knives for years, just grinding away wrong until a buddy showed me the correct angle. It makes you wonder how many other things we're all doing slightly wrong just because we never had someone stop and correct us. That's why I try to speak up when I see someone doing something sketchy now, even if it feels awkward, because you never know if you're the first person to ever tell them.

simoncarr1d ago

Yeah exactly, I started asking guys how they do stuff and half the time they're just making it up as they go too.