Thread: beware men with rattle guns

If you have a second set of rims & tyres, the safest way is to not leave the car with them at all.

....put the rims with the stuffed tyres on the trailer and drop them off at the tyre place...then go to work ..they fit and balance ...pick them up after work .....then put them on the car yourself.

Originally Posted by waynep

If you have a second set of rims & tyres, the safest way is to not leave the car with them at all.

....put the rims with the stuffed tyres on the trailer and drop them off at the tyre place...then go to work ..they fit and balance ...pick them up after work .....then put them on the car yourself.

Our local Tyre power is a lot nicer than I am to my car, Id rather sit and read their 4wd mags while they change my tyres, rotate them and check the wheel alighnment etc.

I dont have to buy the mag then as they have a subscription to the 2 majors.

i always take the wheels off myself and take them down to the tyre joint . And they don't seem to care if you have nice wheels on what ever it is . they manage to scratch a wheel somewhere . I busted a breaker bar one day out on the road trying to change a flat tyre .... was the last time they touched my wheel nuts

Originally Posted by 100I

unfortunately the spare carrier stud is the least of your concerns if all the wheelnuts were done the same way..

Have to agree with that.
Over-tightening of wheel nuts is potentially much more serious than having the inconvenience of looking for a long enough lever to take them back off.
The studs are designed to stretch a certain amount (and return to their original length), which is necessary in order that the two threads do not loosen.
If they have been over-tightened they will have been overstretched and can not return to their original length, this will fatigue the steel which of course reduces the tensile strength, a bit like stretching a spring too far.
Sorry if this all seems a bit nerd like but the point is that the studs have the potential to shear when the wheel is under load, (ever seen a wheel on the side of the freeway and wondered why its there?). Once one snaps the remaining studs are then under extra load and they were already weakened by the heavy handed tyre fitter, so the next one snaps, etc, etc. This could happen in seconds and maybe at 110ks'
If the tyre fitter stretched one to the point that it snapped in the shop , just how close to that point are the rest?

Whenever I have tyres done I remove the nuts when I get home (checking how tight they were) & re-torque them to the LR settings. I always add a dash of Never-Seez as well to each stud.

Far better to know you can remove them ok in the donga than busting your pooper at night on the roadside with vehicles belting around you.

I was a tyre fitter a few years ago and we only used rattle guns on steel rimmed vehicles and only used the rattle gun to spin the nuts up and then used a tension wrench to do the final nip. We could use a the gun without over tightening, yes it is possible.
We would never touch a mag with a rattle gun and I tell any tyre mob that touch my vehicle that they will not use a rattle gun and that if they do they will be replacing every rim and every stud on the vehicle.
We also used anti seize on every vehicle that came through our doors.

The company that did that should be replacing the stud free of charge. I would also be letting the parent company know about this if it was a franchise as these cowboys can cause people alot of misery down the track when they cannot change a tyre in the middle of the bush due to iver tightening and also can actually cause wheels to go walkabout due to excess stress on the studs (You may laugh but I have seen the results of this, not pretty)

Problem is that companies do not respect peoples property these days

Originally Posted by BigJon

We always use a torque wrench when doing up wheel nuts. It is the only correct way to do up wheel nuts.

I tried this once but the torque setting in the manual seemed 2 low & the nuts started 2 work themselves off.
Cheers Dean.