Tony Martyr: I have seen this argument before, but I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense. Of course, you can lock a nut on the drilled stud, and of course, a bolt can come unscrewed. But what stops the stud, with its attached locked nut, twirling round and unscrewing?
And I'm not sure about the 'consistent torque' argument of J Halfpenny – the thread engagement is going to be the same either way, surely?
But then, look at a modern engine – big ends etc with no locking wire, no shakeproof nonsense, no tab washers. Just properly engineered and correctly torqued.
funny old world – Tim