torquing main bearing caps

That is exactly how you do it. It is exactly the way all the tens of thousands of trucks every year that are rebuilt, that is exactly how you do it and it's exactly how they do it. If you have the right torque wrench, the pull is not as nearly difficult as you seem to think it is. Most engines are rebuilt in frame and that is exactly how you do it, from underneath.

There are several members that have responded to this thread that are expert full-time mechanics by trade, and have Decades of experience behind them.

They, along with the engineers at Detroit, who designed that engine and are college-educated and have all the resources of Detroit Diesel behind them, are trying to tell you the correct way to do what you are doing.

But you choose to think about one evening that you spent with a hillbilly somewhere, drinking over a campfire where he told you something that is not the correct method and the wrong thing to do. I highly doubt you've seen all the fleets of trucks that he rebuilt hold up, I highly doubt he ever rebuilt a diesel engine for you and you got a million + out of it so you don't even know he may have just been drinking and not even known what he was saying.

So between that and someone on YouTube, you know better than the engineers and the mechanics. And the guy on YouTube was most likely doing the method prescribed by the engineers for that Caterpillar engine.

You are not going to find what you are looking for here. Here you will find mechanics that are real mechanics that use torque wrenches that torque important things like bearings.

You need to find an engineer's Forum or maybe a machinist forum, somewhere that somebody can mathematically attempt to figure what it is that you are after.

But you would much rather rely on some internet guys mathematical formula than with the engineers at Detroit and what every real mechanic says to do. I have to say that's almost comical.

You cannot find the information that you are after because that is not how it's done.

Anything beyond what the engineers tell you and what the service manual tells you leads you into rolling dice territory.
You have your mind made up but it's on something pretty silly. Engines are not cheap and it's very silly to take a gamble like that.

It's not that difficult. Find a young guy and give him a 50 bucks and a case of beer and he'll crawl under that truck like a monkey. He will have everything torqued in by the time you take a leisurely bathroom break.

But you're not interested in doing it properly so I'm going to give you your answer.

Put the biggest fattest Airline on the biggest air compressor that you can find and get the biggest air gun that you can buy and just hammer it down.

Button it up and forget about it...

Until it reminds you about it.

And you should probably throw away any feelers wrenches if you're going to do the overhead and you should take that same air hammer and Hammer Down on the head bolts. You should burn the service manual because you don't need them telling you how to set your overhead or set your injectors or liner protrusion or anything else.

And you should probably get 10 W 40 motor oil that's for a gasoline engine and put regular green antifreeze in with no additives.

Yeah those Engineers they don't know anything...

 

I wanna like this again.....
Excellent post. 10/10
My thoughts exactly.

 

I'm not disagreeing with you on that. Torque plus turn is more accurate then a straight up torque.

I am disagreeing with you over the fact that you want to use a torque plus turn on a fastener and engine that was never designed for it.

 

I turn mine a full turn after they hit bottom. Never had a problem.

 

If you bought your parts locally, maybe they will send someone over to properly tighten the bolts for you. shouldn't cost too much.

 

@pushbroom and @AModelCat

Your really not thinking hear. Guys like you and me make alot of money fixing things that someone knew how to do it.

Geez Stop

 

Like Amodel Cat and Pushbroom have said. All I’ve ever seen anyone do (my self included) is use a torque wrench on anything that has a specified torque spec.
If it doesn't I’ll take torque wrench to the bolt size and it’s grade spec.
Only us torque to yield if it specifies it. Like the majority of German engineered stuff is torque to yield. Never seen much older domestic stuff like that.
Example some BMW turbo diesel main and rod bolts are final 90 degree pull and head bolts are a certain torque spec wait 10 minutes than pull 90 degrees when cold than after first warm up pull 90 degrees more. Who knows what the final torque number truely is on those bolts and I’d bet that they all could be 80 pounds different from on another. But thats their specified spec.