Oil Pickup troubles - 03 4.6 DOHC

[bigdubz]

So Dad was putting on the oil pickup tube a few weeks ago, and ran into some trouble. By that I mean that he snapped the head off of one of the bolts at the pump, which then caused the other pump bolt head to snap off and also the bolt at the pickup end to strip out of the standoff/nut that attaches to the main stud.

Fortunately, we were able to recovers all of the bolt parts.

This picture shows some of the pieces involved, the broken oil pump bolt, the intact lower pickup bolt, and the standoff/nut that with damaged threads:


The standoff goes here, right on the main cap stud:



Now that everything broken has been removed, we're going to get new bolts and standoff, but what the heck could have caused this? Dad was using an inch-pounds torque wrench, and he's not known to over-muscle this kind of thing. Is there anything to know when I go to install the pickup such as a torque sequence, anything to look for?

Also, can we install the new standoff on the main cap by itself, or does the entire cap need to be loosened and re-torqued?

Thanks very much,
Andrew

[mn12]

he was using an inch pound wrench but what were you torquing the bolt to? The bolts to the pump are supposed to be 7.5 ft lbs. Here is a good reference
Ford 4.6L-281ci-V8 Torque Specifications - TorkSpec - Knowledge for the Motorhead

[bigdubz]

The inch pounds torque wrench set at 90 inch-pounds is the equivalent of 7.5 foot-pounds, and since the foot-pounds torque wrench starts at around 25 foot-pounds...

When we put it back together I'm certainly going to double check the torque specs and follow them exactly.

[mn12]

weird....is it possible your torque wrench is out of calibration