Undoing car wheel nuts at the side of the road

Marcrum

Yes ... I doubt that there is a garage or a tyre depot in the country that doesn't have a perfectly good torque-wrench and a chart giving the correct settings for every vehicle known to man (and woman) and then some.

fred246

A couple of years ago I took my car for a new car tyre. The idiot jacked my car under the sill causing a lot of damage and then over-tightened the wheel nuts. When I tried to loosen them my wheel brace rounded off. My latest trick was to order my tyre from Tyreleader in Germany. It was £53. I then rang around until I found someone to fit it, balance and dispose of the old one for £10. I explained I would just bring the wheel in. Blackcircles wanted £85 to fit the same tyre. I saved £22 and jacked the car and tightened the wheel nuts with my own torque wrench. So new tyre without any damage. Mechanics should be registered like gas safe engineers. You should be able to report the idiots.

mchale

boliston wrote: »

I guess if the road is not too busy then manoeuvre it so the tyre to be changed is at the edge - also putting up the bonnet is a clear sign the car is "broken down" rather than just badly parked

Also I find when changing a wheel if you leave the spare wheel on the floor about 2ft away from the o/s of the car it stops all the idiots trying to run you over while you are jacking it up. :rotfl: :rotfl:

onomatopoeia99

skivenov wrote: »

I'm not exactly heavy, I've never had a wheel bolt on a car that wouldn't undo with me standing on the standard wheel brace and bouncing on it.

I have. When I had an Audi Quattro the wheel bolts seemed to tighten on. To my embarrassment I couldn't get one of them undone with the standard wrench supplied with the car, though I did manage to bruise my ankle quite a bit from bouncing up and down and sliding off it. In the end I had to call the AA. Even the man in a van struggled a bit using his extending wrench before getting it undone.

I always made sure the threads were clean and always torqued them up correctly when fitting wheels, so it wasn't owner error


On the point about tyre fitting places, every one I've been to in the last 20 years has used a torque wrench after the air impact wrench when refitting the wheels, and when I've taken in a car that wasn't on their chart they've asked me the torque I wanted - this includes the big national chain places. I have more problems with the amount of air they put in, unless told the kiddies that work in them tend to put 30psi in the front tyres of Imp based stuff, which is ... not good :eek: (18psi is correct).

carguy986

Buy a 600mm breaker bar and those nut should come off no problem. £10.

Garages are supposed to torque the nuts to the correct tightness manually using a torque wrench but most don't both bother and use an impact gun which over tightens. Lazy.

Buy a torque wrench and tighten them up correctly yourself. £20. (I used the guide to this on Road and Race on Youtube)