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Clockwise or Counter clockwise

Old 01-30-21, 09:48 AM
  #26  
unterhausen
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"Righty tighty, lefty loosey" refers to which hand you look at to see which way to turn the wrench. Make a thumbs up with your hand and point the thumb in the direction you want the bolt to go. Look at which way your fingers are wrapped and that's the direction the wrench has to go. If I'm tired and something is not coming loose, I do this as a sanity check.
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Old 01-30-21, 10:39 AM
  #27  
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I've encountered quite a few new mechanic types who have a hard time with one or the other when explaining lefty loosey/righty tighty or clockwise/counter cw so I just use both. Often they can't grasp either until they have some actual experience. Also have to explain that it depends on what side of the fastener your looking at too. Spoke nipple direction seems to be the hardest to explain to people. Whatever explanation works is how I look at it.
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Old 01-30-21, 12:18 PM
  #28  
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Originally Posted by Crankycrank
I've encountered quite a few new mechanic types who have a hard time with one or the other when explaining lefty loosey/righty tighty or clockwise/counter cw so I just use both. Often they can't grasp either until they have some actual experience. Also have to explain that it depends on what side of the fastener your looking at too. Spoke nipple direction seems to be the hardest to explain to people. Whatever explanation works is how I look at it.
I taught myself a while back to just think of spoke nipple direction as "opposie" of what is our normal take on "tightening and loosening", kinda like the left side pedal. I teach people the left pedal thing is like how left=wrong, like how teachers would smack left handed writers with a ruler as it was wrong and had to be corrected. Left=wrong=reverse thread

I agree though on whatever explanation works and sticks in ones head.
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Old 01-30-21, 12:32 PM
  #29  
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Originally Posted by Crankycrank
Spoke nipple direction seems to be the hardest to explain to people.
The other difficult to explain component is the barend shifter pod for which you turn the fastening bolt counterclockwise to tighten it in place. That's because you are actually working from the threaded end of the bolt which is facing you, not the head. That end has an allen key socket machined into it which is unusual.
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Old 01-30-21, 01:00 PM
  #30  
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You think he got the crank off?
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Old 01-30-21, 01:56 PM
  #31  
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Originally Posted by cyccommute
There are only two place on a bicycle where a left hand thread is used. One is the “English” threaded bottom bracket where the driveside is a left hand thread that loosens by turning right or clockwise. The other is the left pedal which loosens the same way. All other bolts on a bike are “normal” right handed (loosen counterclockwise).

The way I teach my bicycle mechanic students to remember how to remove the pedals and the bottom bracket is by using the positioning of the wrench. For pedal removal, put the crank arm so that it is pointing forward at 90°. Put the wrench on (green arrow) and push down (red arrow). Do that on both sides.


For the bottom bracket, put the wrench at 90° and push down. Again, do that on both sides.

Except for ashtabula cranks, where the left side threads are lefty.

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/opc.html
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Old 01-30-21, 03:45 PM
  #32  
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Originally Posted by djb
I taught myself a while back to just think of spoke nipple direction as "opposie" of what is our normal take on "tightening and loosening", kinda like the left side pedal.. . .

I agree though on whatever explanation works and sticks in ones head.
Not “kinda like” at all. That could cause novices to think that spoke threads are reverse threaded.
When I’m building a wheel, I’m looking at the rim, spoke, and nipple in such an orientation that I am clearly turning the nipple clockwise, from my vantage point, to tighten it. Even truing a built wheel while it’s in the bike, I’m looking down on the top of the rim. I’m always looking at the front of the clock.

The important thing for learners is that when looking at the back side of a clock, turning the gears in a clockwise direction makes the hands move backwards. This comes up when considering both ends of a traditional hub axle with a locknut and a cone at each end. If you don’t have an axle vice, you loosen the locknut closer to you by first putting a cone wrench on the far-side cone as a fixator. Then when you apply c-cl torque to the near-side locknut, the counter-torque that your other hand is applying clockwise, as you look at it, tries to drive the far cone against its locknut, preserving the tightness there so the only thing that moves is the locknut on the near side. Both threads are right-hand-rule threads and both parts move away from you when turned clockwise. In this case, though, the far cone is being driven in a direction that would loosen it, from the point of view of balls in the bearing, were it not for the locknut.

(Yes I know you put a cone wrench on the near-side cone too, to immobilize it so the c-cl torque breaks the friction between cone and locknut. You really need two cone wrenches and three hands. My point is that you don’t put the fixator wrench on the far-side locknut because the counter-torque would tend to loosen it away from the far-side cone, a case where it’s “righty-loosey ” even with a right-hand thread.)

Reading Tom Cuthbertson’s description of this in Anybody’s Bike Book nearly 50 years ago was an epiphany for me.
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Old 01-30-21, 05:10 PM
  #33  
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All I know is that it works for me, so I'm happy. The rare times I'm mucking about with tightening spokes, a bike is on the stand and I sit on a chair.
but again, it keeps it straight in my head, that's all I'm saying.
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