GETTING THE NUTS ON – MAY 13, 2019

It may look like nail polish, but the red stripes in the image above are not there for good looks. After you torque down the bolts/nuts in a final assembly, you then paint a stripe over both to show that that nut has been torqued to spec, and also to show that it hasn’t come loose and moved during use, or that it hasn’t been tampered with. If you do maintenance requiring a nut to be removed, it is common practice to paint a new stripe for the same purpose.

These nuts and bolts are part of the tail assembly, and show that all is as it should be to anyone doing an inspection of the vehicle at a later date. If the paint on the nut did not line up with the paint on the bolt, you could tell that the nut had been loosened.