Thread: Rear wheel carrier

Well, I reckon a 90% win on my part, I already had the brake pads and new rotors, which I was going to fit myself, and they not only fixed the tight wheel nuts, but fitted the pads and rotors at no charge, and put the repaired wheel carrier back on for me.

I'm out a bent tyre lever and the wheel nut I buggered up trying to loosen, but on the other hand didn't spend hours on the weekend doing the brake work myself.

They did try to blame the factory tyre lever as too short (which has never been a problem for me in the past), but given that they didn't even try to charge me for what must have been several hours of labour, I decided to not push the point, thanked them for sorting it out the same day I brought the car in, and left.

In two minds as to whether I will go back again or not. Usually service there is pretty good.

Tell them to set the factory torque on the wheel nuts next time and you won't have a problem.

Originally Posted by Pinelli

They did try to blame the factory tyre lever as too short

The factory tyre lever length should be perfect so that the strength of the average person leaning on the lever will torque the nut to the correct setting. The flip side of that is, that if the tyre lever was too short, then using it to tighten a wheel nut would guarantee the nut was not done up tight enough when you changed your tyre.

So as I'm sure everyone agrees..... tyre lever being too short is almost certainly untrue.

Originally Posted by Judo

The factory tyre lever length should be perfect so that the strength of the average person leaning on the lever will torque the nut to the correct setting. The flip side of that is, that if the tyre lever was too short, then using it to tighten a wheel nut would guarantee the nut was not done up tight enough when you changed your tyre.

So as I'm sure everyone agrees..... tyre lever being too short is almost certainly untrue.

OK, so this made me curious...

I just measured my D1 tyre lever. Assuming the centre of my force on the lever is about 2cm in from the end of the handle, my tyre lever is about 25cm long. If I put my full weight of 65kg on that I will torque the nut to 159Nm. D1 spec says 126Nm. I'm not exactly fat at 65kg and I can easily over torque my wheel nuts with a 25cm factory tyre lever.

To apply 126Nm of torque/force to the nut on my tyre lever, I need to apply just over 51kg of weight.

I remember when I first bought my Disco, I was jumping up and down on that lever and couldn't get a nut to budge. Clearly WAY over 126Nm.

Thanks Judo, confirms my gut feeling on that comment.

Final post here, I bought an aftermarket extendable tyre lever from autopro - when shortened, its pretty much the same length as the LandRover original, and extended gives me just that extra bit of leverage, so I'm guessing I can extend it to remove wheels if need be, and shorten it to put them back on.

I went around and loosed the wheel nuts, and despite being reassured that this time they torqued them correctly, some of the buggers were still very tight. Got out the torque wrench myself and tightened them to 140Nm, as per the Hayes. Checked, and yep, can be removed by the short tyre level with some effort, but no jumping up and down required.

Of course, irony really kicked in when I noticed they'd helpfully placed a sticker on the inside of the windscreen stating that the wheel nuts needed to be retightened after 50km

Cheers all