My sister’s 1999 Saab 9-3 has lug bolts and she went through a mess recently when some were over-tightened. I think the third shop finally got them off.
I worked for VW and SAAB and both used bolts instead of studs. The aggravating part sometimes is trying to wrestle a wheel into alignment and start a lug bolt as compared to having studs which allow the wheel to hang a bit.
I’ve also gotten into a few of those rounded bolt situations and some of the VW wheels at times would practically weld themselves to the hubs.
A guy I worked with kind of hollered at me a bit one time after backing a Golf out of the stall and said “what do you think about this?”.
Think about what?
Take a look at the front wheels.
Not a lug bolt on either one of them.
He then pulled the car back in, raised it up on the lift, and managed to wrestle the wheels off so as to perform that front brake job.
He had more faith in those wheels staying in place than I would have.
Um… did the shop owner see this?
I’m not lacking a sense of humor, but that seems a bit irresponsible.
No, the service manager did not see him do this. It’s not something I would ever consider doing but the guy was a top notch VW mechanic and apparently felt secure in what he was doing.
I seem to remember he spent about 10 minutes removing those wheels after getting it back on the rack…
Here is what I observed a couple of weeks ago. I did not have time to rotate the tires on my wife’s Sentra so she took it in to the tire shop where the tires were purchased. They were rotating them as a courtesy since she was not the original purchaser. She called me when I got back in town and said the tire shop had not called her to pick up the car yet. My uncle dropped me off at the tire shop so that I could bring the car home. I stepped into the bay and all 4 wheels of the little car were on the floor. I told the manager that I was there to pick up the Sentra so he sent a technician to finish the job.
The “technician” proceeded to put the first wheel on with an impact wrench then grabbed a torque wrench and set it to the appropriate value. When he “torqued” the lugs…they did not move at all. I knew immediately that the lug nuts were over-torqued because the they did not move before the torque wrench clicked. I asked him why he did that and he said “As long as the torque wrench “clicks” then the lug nuts are properly torqued.” I told him to stop right there and went to get the manager. I explained what had happened to the manager and he just shrugged his shoulders and walked away. I let the technician finish the job and took the car home.
When I arrived home…I loosened all the lug nuts and torqued them to the proper value with my torque wrench. I told my wife to never use that tire store again because they had no idea what they were doing. I fired off a couple of emails to the tire shop’s home office in hopes that it would do some good. All I got back was an email stating that the manager had been with the company for 30 years and knew what he was doing when it came to tires. He knows exactly what he is doing…he is letting his employees “go through the motions” just to get the job done and the vehicles out of his bay. I hope he sleeps good at night because I couldn’t. I value my integrity too much.
Tester, I was only responding to the same mountainbike’s statement that the hub has to be removed. I just don’t remove one unless I have to.
That’s what I use is a piece of long exhaust pipe over breaker bar to get more leverage on it to break them lose it will do the trick. I just had one with same problem they over tightened all rear lug nuts on rear driverside to where aluminum shavings where falling off from rim bc how tight they had them and it took me 3 breaker bars to get them with the exhaust pipe but I did get them and broke 2 breaker bars in the process.
depending how new his vehicle is and what make it is. it’s the honda and Hyundai that doesnt have that. They say u have to remove the hub bearing on the Hondas but u dont there is away around them same as the Hyundai’s on some of those models u can just grind the dust plate to get pass the and cut off part of the stud head and that does the trick for them