Back in the day I rebuilt several engines before I could afford a torque wrench. All survived for many thousands of miles. Some even survived several seasons of racing. I still look at 'authoritive' torque figures with a jaundiced eye, but consider maximum torque for a given fastener as an upper limit. That being said, I have never put my torque wrench on a wheel stud, and many other fasteners.
I for one, would really like to see a thread on this forum noting errors in so called authoritive manuals, however, given the arguments that break out in this forum about basics I doubt if it would prove successful (consider the question of torqueing heads hot or cold).
Considering the fact that Ford workers may never have used torque wrenches maybe they worked to a similar regimen that I knew when working on the bench. Typically the instructions would state something like - tighten finger tight plus a half turn or shim to a certain clearance and then bolt up tight. Maybe we had a better sense of 'rightness' back in the day.
Finally, I installed new tie rod ends on our Tudor last winter. The supplied locking bolts snapped before the tie rod ends were locked. I think they were Grade -8. I replaced them with Grade 5 bolts which worked just fine.
