How Tight is Too Tight?

I have been replacing the rotors, pads, and calipers with little to no trouble. The Bearing Retaining Castle Nut on the drivers side came off just as was predicted by ME. That being "with little effort and with a pair of pipe pliers". The passenger side however proved to be more difficult. The pliers would not budge it and as I am not in the possession of a socket large enough to do the job, I had to resort to pounding on one of the castle heads with a hammer and punch in order to get it to make the 1/4 turn needed for the pliers to do the rest of the job. This caused some mushrooming but on the whole, the nut is still serviceable.

Upon replacing the rotor and putting the wheel back together, I meet with the same problem. In order to get the nut back to the same amount of threads in tightness and to line up with the cotter pin hole, I again had to pound the daylights out of it with a hammer and punch which again resulted in mushrooming another part of the nut. Again it is usable so no problems there.

Is this normal? Does the nut need to be this tight and if so, was the driver's side too loose? Should it be a quarter turn looser and line up with the next pin section? Keep in mind that I am doing all of this without a torque wrench so lbs of tightening will mean nothing at this point.

however tight the castle nut is-it will not alter the spacing on the bearings-thats what the shims and the slotted washer do-the only affect the castle nut can have in this situation is if it is too loose. tighten it to the next pin hole-they spin on quite freely on my cars-hope you havnt cross threaded anything

The nut went on freely enough thus no cross threading. It was just that last 1/2 to 1/4 turn both going on and coming off that proved to be difficult and thus resulted in my questions.

if you do the castle nut up tight and you lock the wheel up it means you have too many shims on-if you have the right shims on you can tighten it as much as you like-but always to the next pin hole! )

Well, the wheel is not locking up, moves rather freely in fact. So I guess that all is well and that I am probably worried about very little. Thanks for the input.

You got a bigger shade tree than i have.

Not sure I understand what you are referring to Bernard.

Tools.
Method.

Are you being cryptic, am I just missing something, both? Shade tree? Tools? Method?

Is the spacer behind the wheel in properly with the champher side inward?

IMO you should invest in the proper socket, or at least a good Crescent wrench. There is a torque spec for that nut, so technically a torque wrench would be a good idea too, but not absolutely necessary.

Usually somewhere between 45 and 70 lbs should make it tight enough, while giving you the leeway to get the cotter pin in.

Yes, the spacer behind the wheel is in properly with the champher side inward. Thanks Gil.

You are absolutely correct Rod, I should have a larger socket set but everything in time. My first thought was a large crescent wrench, which I have, but as the nut is recessed into the hub, I could not get a good enough hold on it without risking slippage and then resulting in a rounded nut. Much harder to extract.

I'll go with Neil's advise on this one in that all is well and that I was worried about very little.

Not sure what to do about Bernard however. :)

Bernard is referencing the term Shade Tree Mechanic.
You have a bigger Shade Tree...
You are willing to do things that would make him nervous.
It is a compliment.

If the nut is snug against the spacer and the cotter pin lines up you are good to go. The system works sort of like this...
If the cotter pin is in the hole the nut cannot unscrew.
If the nut cannot unscrew the spacer will not shift.
If the spacer doesn't shift the bearings won't wobble out of the race.
If the bearings are nested well in the race you are good to go.

If your wheel is spinning freely and there is no play in the bearing you really can't ask for more.

Too tight is when this system doesn't work.

Rod illustrated my thoughts .
A shade tree makes do with whatever is avilable..
Meant as a piece of humor not an insult.

being resourceful?

"You got a bigger shade tree than i have." Ahh, a down south colloquialism. I thought Bernard was referring to the skinny Poplar trees in behind my MGB in the avatar. Thanks for the explanation Michael and thanks for the complement Bernard. Actually, I did not think I was doing anything unusual, just replicating what I had read here on ME and in the library.

Either way, thanks to all for indicating that I had indeed accomplished the task correctly. The results that is, perhaps the method needs improvement.

When I could not tighten the castle nut to the previos tightness i tightened it down as much as I could, then backed it off till the holes aligned.