Dear ARRMA assembly person: There is such a thing as 'Too Tight'

[sadlerbw]

Dear random ARRMA assembly worker,

First, thanks for putting so much effort into assembling my Granite. I can say with all honesty that none of the stock fasteners came loose. However, could you maybe ask management for a torque wrench or something, because you went a little crazy with the driveshaft-to-axle screws. Look, I get that you don't want QC fails coming back on you. Maybe they yell at you. Maybe they hit you with a stick. I don't really know. What I DO know is that you put the monkey fist to this stupid screw so hard that it had become one with the axle shaft!

I cut the plastic wheel axle off to reduce the tension on the screw...no luck. I have nice hex wrenches...and they still rounded out the screw head trying to break it loose. I cut a slot in the head to get more torque...and the screw head split in half. Even when I cut the friggin' axle shaft in half, the pieces of screw STILL didn't want to come out! Maybe next time, stop turning that screw BEFORE you hear the sounds of molecular bonding, so us mere mortals have a slim hope of ever getting it back out.

Sincerely,

The guy cursing at his Granite

 

[mark808]

Driveshaft to axle screws??? That's the only fastener we've had an issue with. one of them was loose from the factory and the wheel went flying. None of them have any loctite on them on our big rock 3s.

Before stopping and thinking about which screw you were talking about, I almost asked you if you tried heating it up to defeat red loctite.

 

[slick2500]

Imagine how us 6s guys feel everything was caked in red loctite on my Outcast including the shock caps!

 

[sadlerbw]

...Before stopping and thinking about which screw you were talking about, I almost asked you if you tried heating it up to defeat red loctite.

Actually, once I gave up on really saving the axle...I did. Nada, although I didn't go cherry-red with the heat or anything that crazy. I don't know if it was cross-threaded all to hell, if there was some grit on the threads, or what, but the screw and axle had become one. I kept wondering if the screw stripped out when they installed it at the factory, and the person just slammed trigger down on the driver until the screw got hot enough to weld its self in! This thing was S-T-U-C-K Stuck.