Morris Minor Owners Club

And so to the next conundrum... I have fitted the new steering rack and have tried to tighten the nut on the track rod ball joint onto the steering lever, but it reaches a point where the bolt is turning with the nut before it is fully tight. I can see the end of the bolt flush with the end of the nut, but it will not tighten further and keeps spinning. There is play in the taper as it has not been drawn down tight.
Any ideas on how I can tighten it?

push down on the joint top with a bar to lock it into the taper whilst tightening the nut.

I have tried G claps and a valve spring compressor but cannot get it down tight enough to move the nut. I don't have much to lever a bar against. I can't tighten or loosen the nut as it keeps turning.

Some blocks of wood and use of the jack to apply pressure from below seems to have done the trick to get the nut off. I have cleaned up the taper, removed any traces of grease and will try again keeping it under the same pressure with the jack.

well done probably had residual grease on faces. Use brake cleaner to clean mating surfaces, dont be afraiad to give it a knock with block of wood and hammer to lock it into the taper

Thanks. Yes, I gave it a good squirt of brake cleaner and now is fully tight. Phew! It's surprising how all those odd blocks of wood come in so handy at the right moment.

My advice is do not use the Nyloc self locking nut on the initial tightening but use a plain nut.
When the male taper is tight in the female taper remove the plain nut and fit a self locking nut.
The resistance of the Nyloc self locking nut insert can easily overcome the resistance to turn for the male taper.
As above both tapers need to be perfectly clean and grease free.
I use methylated spirits to clean contact faces and which may be cheaper than brake cleaner.
The use of a plain nut for initial tightening works every time for me.

Many thanks Phil. I hope the other side will now be easier!

philthehill wrote: ↑Mon Jun 16, 2025 5:35 pm
The resistance of the Nyloc self locking nut insert can easily overcome the resistance to turn for the male taper.

I wholeheartedly agree with that comment.
I encountered such problems in my RAF career.
One example, we had an issue, circa 1980/81, with heavy handed engineers shearing terminal studs on a particular electrical terminal block.
It was quite small with nyloc terminal nuts of only about 5 mm.
Shearing the stud off meant turning a 30 minute job into several hours, if there were actually replacement terminal blocks available....

To prevent this stud shearing problem, the Design Authority (DA) introduced a requirement for the use of Torque Wrenches with quite a low setting.
Clearly, the DA didn't do their homework, because shortly after they introduced this measure, we had a far bigger problem on that system....

Investigation revealed the cause of the new problem was that the Torque setting the DA had specified to prevent over tightening of the small nuts DID NOT exceed the Maximum Rundown Torque of the Nyloc nuts, in fact it was barely exceeding the designed Minimum Rundown Torque of the Nylocs .
The Rundown Torque being that required to actually get the nut all the way down the terminal stud to the bottom.
Consequently the electrical circuit integrity could be compromised.
The Aircraft DA had failed to consult the actual manufacturer of the Terminal Blocks.....

Why have washer under nut?

They spread the load and prevent possible damage from nut surface to object.