lug nut woes

[ag bullet]

Or balanced, or alligned. If you take your car to the shop to get your tires rotated you might as well throw $20 down the drain. Just do it yourself! It's a little work, it takes like 15 minutes, and you get the satisfaction of not only knowing you just helped keep yourself healthy, but you also did work on your own car!


AG bullet, what company do you work for?

Discount Tire Company. Alignment is totally different from balancing as you know. DTC doesn't align cars. We only sell wheels and tires. When you buy tires from us the rotations and BALANCING are free, for the life of the tires.

You can roto on your own, but the balance will go out and get worse as the tires wear.

 

[goldwing2000]

Sometimes even the places that use torque wrenches have their heads up their asses.

I went to a Belle Tire, the same shop I always go to, to have new wheels put on my Blazer. I happened to look out into the shop when the tire jockey was torquing one of the wheels and noticed he had a 3-ft long torque wrench and was reefing on the lugs. These are only 7/16" studs with a torque spec of 80-90 ft-lbs, so I knew something was up.
I went out there and asked him what he was tightening them to and he says, "140 ft-lbs."
My jaw almost dropped. (eek2)
They have a 24"x36" poster on the wall with torque specs and it clearly said 88 ft-lbs.
After I straightened him out, I told the manager that if any of my wheel studs were stretched or broken, that I'd be back and he would be replacing them for free.

With regard to rotating, I rarely have a shop do mine but I did last time for two reasons:
1. It was free because I bought my tires from them.
2. It was cold as hell with about 3 inches of snow on the ground.