The day after my daughter got new tires on her car I was going to do a through brake inspection and put the car on my lift and went to remove the wheels, a broken snap on 1/2" drive socket, lug nut sheared in half, several chrome lug nut cover removals, 3 drilled out studs, a couple gallons of sweat and 5 hours later I had the wheels off.

I bought a set of the irwin bolt grip striped nut remover and was very impressed, that thing gripped so well that the lug nut actually sheared in half and it never let go.

Called the tire shop and they said that they always use a torque stick but they did offer to pay for the damages.

 

I don't know, some of these places are real butcher shops.

Years ago I had a new '85 F-150, it needed an oil change, middle of winter and didn't have a place to do it myself so I took it to a national oil change place down the road to have them do it. At the next oil change some time later in better weather I crawl under the truck, pull the plug and change the oil. I try to install the drain plug and it would go in correctly. Take a closer look at the plug and the threads are all screwed up. I went to the local McParts store and got a universal rubber plug, filled the truck with oil and went back to the oil change place to have them fix their screw up, used an impact wrench to toque the plug in. The cocky manage came out and told me that sometimes the oil pan bolts get rusty and when I tried to remove it to do my oil change I probable screwed the threads up. I told him of all of the places a bolt wouldn't get rusty in the oil pan plug. Ended up using rubber push in plugs for the rest of the time I owned the truck.

My wife works at COSTCO and got a set of tires for my daily driver PU. They tell my my factory lug nuts are bad and they need to replace them with new ones. A couple of months later I needed to remove the wheels to change brakes and the "new" nuts where rusted to hell and I had a heck of a time getting them off using all of the tools at my disposal in my shop. I ended up buying all new nut, again, but this time they were a lot better than the crap ones that COSTCO sold me. I later talked to the tire manager and told him he was lucky he wasn't with me when I removed my wheels because I would have strangle him. I also told him if I had a flat on the road I would not have been able to remove the wheel. I wasn't happy..

 

lshort, I feel sympathy for your ordeal. You had more carnage than I did when trying to remove lugnuts from a <two-year-old> Ford Escape. They also had the chrome caps that swelled and became very difficult to remove. I had brought my Escape to a local tire shop for a winter tire changeover and they called me to say they abandoned the job due to broken and stripped lugnuts. I had to get my car from them and bring it home and try to remove the rest of them myself. It took me hours and a half pint of blood but I got them off and then went to the local Ford dealer to buy new nuts so that I could put the wheels back on. If I had a flat on the side of the road there was no way it could have been repaired roadside.

After selling me 20 nuts for over $135, the parts dept guy at the dealer quietly told me about a class-action lawsuit that was going on. I joined the lawsuit cause I has angry that I had to pay for these parts while the car was still under warranty. The Escape was only 2 years old at the time.
All I wanted was for Ford to re-pay me for the lugnuts.
Two years had passed and in 2019 I learned that the court had thrown out the class action lawsuit case. We can only imagine lobbying and back room deals that went on to get the case dismissed. The clearly terrible design of the nuts had no consequence to Ford.

 

I'm pretty sure the devil himself invented those lug nuts with the chrome coverings.

 

Class action law suits are a joke. The only people who get anything out of them are the lawyers.

I was involved in a class action suit with an insurance company. I didn't initiate it, I just got a notice one day I was involved in it. I didn't do a thing and some time later I got notice our case was won, I got an increase in my life insurance benefit from $50K to $52 thousand. I'll never see it and it didn't really cost the insurance company anything.

A friend of mine was drawn into a class action suit about 20 years with his local internet provider. At the time he had dial up which was slow as all heck but his wife didn't want to spend the extra money fora DSL connection. The internet provider lost and gave all of the complainants free DSL connection for six months. Well, after being on fast interenet I doubt many went back to dial up. It was like giving out free coke for six months and then seeing if they'd come back to pay for more. My friend's wife got hooked and wouldn't go back to dial up. It was a win for the lawyers and the internet provider.

 

Yea, shops are "supposed" to use the torque sticks, and/or a torque wrench for lug nuts.....yea right. I'm not a fan of the torque sticks. I think under normal operating conditions they probably work like they should... ...but most shops aren't "normal operating conditions"
Most of the shops I've ever worked in had the air compressors cranked up with line pressure averaging 150+psi (them old air tools work much better when you crank the air way up). Couple that with the guys out on the floor hitting every nut with their ugga-duggas as hard as they can (with or without the torque sticks)

 

I've had pretty good luck with our local chain tire shop. It seems like they run it professionally and I haven't had any major issues. But on my vehicles that l don't want to chance it I always torque the lugnuts by hand with a torque wrench.

 

I had the same issue. Called the dealership I was dealing with at the time. Bring it in and we will fix it. Went in. Dude came out and "fixed" it. What he did. Battery impact, loosened off the lugs. Put torque stick on and ran at full bore until it stopped. Turned on the torque wrench and it clicked at the required torque. The lug did not move. Checked it against mine and it moved after 160 ft/lbs. Later talked to my mechanic son about tis practice. What you are supposed to do is run the impact slow as you can override the torque stick going to fast. The tighten with the torque wrench, 2 or 3 times around the rim. But for piece workers it is faster the other way. Most don't know you can over due the torque stick. That was strike 3 for me at that shop, once darn near killed me. Never went back, even though the manager asked for another chance after I talked to him

 

I dont trust the torque sticks either...or at least the guy using them. I always checked the nut torque after getting the vehicle home and the nut torque values are all over the place....some as tight as described above. I promptly loosen the nuts and re-torque with a torque wrench. My impressions after watching the guys at the shop use them are that they are in a "NASCAR hurry" and they use air pressure suited for earth mover tires.
Occasionally, I take the wheels and tires off the vehicle and bring them to the shop....just so they don't inflict abuse on the lug nuts.

 

Along these same lines...
I worked as a mechanic for years back in the day. I used to always just use my 1/2 impact to run the lug nuts back on and then give them an extra bump for good measure. When it started to become a practice to use a torque wrench on lug nuts I was one of the old school guys that didn't buy into it and kept on doing things the way I always did.
Now, I'm a believer in using a torque wrench on lug nuts. It seemed like my brake rotors on my various vehicles were always out of round causing a pulsating brake pedal on stopping. It would be so bad that I'd be turning rotors before I needed pads.
Someone along the way convinced me to torque the lug nuts properly (no torque sticks). Since I started torquing my lug nuts I rarely have rotors go out of round. I can't remember the last time I turned rotors..

 

I ALWAYS insist they use a torque WRENCH not an air gun on my tires and quote the torque I want used, then I stand there and watch that they do as requested. Torque stocks are a joke, it's real easy to overdrive them with an air gun. Ask me how I know...

 

At least back in the day the lug nuts were solid steel and you could pretty well put them on as tight as you wanted and still get them off if you had a long enough cheater pipe but now many lug nuts have chrome covers and the underlying but is not much better, the issue now is rounding off the lug nut

 

Shane, this is so true. Enough to make a nun swear.



Tom

 

Speaking of tire shops, every time (not sometimes) my cars tires are balanced/rotated at our tire shop (a US National chain), they never get the tire pressure correct, especially on staggered pressures. They’re great on everything else. So when I pick up the vehicle, the first thing I do when picking it up is check and correct the tire pressure. Yes, I tell the manager, but they go through tire mounters (teenagers) like change in a pocket with a hole in it.

 

I have one shop I trust with the torque, because I know the guys, and they have low turnover in staff, and I can watch they mount the wheels if I want. They use a real torque wrench every time.

They also are a tiny shop with one bay, and if you have a 930 appointment, you are out the door by 1030 without fail. Great place.

Other places, well, what you should do is back off each lug nut and re-tighten to sped by hand. I don't know if I would have the patience.