3 ms·
but, not the service of enlarging the contact surface of the bolt or screw head. Actually, they only perform a tiny fraction of the crucial services performed
by jethro_tell 2y ago
but, not the service of enlarging the contact surface of the bolt or screw head.
Actually, they only perform a tiny fraction of the crucial services performed by washers and can be replaced by loctite in almost all situations, so, I'd contend they are the most worthless of washers.
- suzzer99 2y agoBut you don't always need more surface area, just something you don't want to wiggle loose, like say your cargo carrier on top of your car that's attached with hand wingnuts. I don't have enough experience with loctite to know if I want to spray it on that.
- heisenzombie 2y agoYeah, a split ring washer there is probably not doing much. Possibly even making things worse. Given it's more or less impossible to sufficiently torque a wing nut, there are actually not many great solutions... A dab of low strength loctite would definitely help, but that's one-time-only and you've got to carry the loctite around if you want to re-do the connection... At which point why not just carry a spanner instead and just use a properly-torqued normal nut? Probably the best would be to swap out the plain wingnuts for nylock wing nuts, which should at least help a bit.
- suzzer99 2y agoI bought some split ring washers and they worked great. The nuts went from coming loose every few days on a long road trip, to not coming loose at all.
- jethro_tell 2y agoSplit washers only work in a relatively narrow torque band. If I can't use a torque wrench, I'll use a lock nut or loctite. There are very few applications where a split washer adds much value.