Spare Wheel – Car

[RobinParticipant @robin]

There should be a rule that the garage fit your wheels using the spanner provided. They have a bad habit of using a super high torque impact wrench that you will not have at the roadside 🙁

Robin

 

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

^^^

No, the rule should be that they fit the nuts/bolts to the torque specified by the manufacturer.

[Robin]

On Robin Said:

There should be a rule that the garage fit your wheels using the spanner provided. They have a bad habit of using a super high torque impact wrench that you will not have at the roadside 🙁

 

 

The super high torque impact wrench that most use is usually the most basic and cheapest 1/2″ drive tool available. It’s actual specs are about what you’d expect for £40(LINK), and are reliant on the compressor, air line, hose, fittings, tool and user’s optimism being up to scratch. They very rarely are! Spend £10 on a cheap extendable breaker bar and you’ll easily outperform one with your body weight.

My gripe with the tools supplied with most cars for wheel changes is the shitty quality; I’ve seen lots of wheel braces that have split as soon as some force is applied to them, assuming that the pressed steel jack didn’t bend while lifting the car. We won’t talk about the users who attempted to use the jack upside down, or the frequent need to beat the wheel off once the nuts have been loosened….

 

 

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Not my experience, even the helpful AA man couldn’t shift the nuts on our minibus when we got a slow puncture. He had a 6ft scaffold tube. I think there is some advice that if they have been over tightened to that extent the studs and nuts should be replaced.

[Nick Wheeler]

On Nick Wheeler Said:

On Robin Said:

There should be a rule that the garage fit your wheels using the spanner provided. They have a bad habit of using a super high torque impact wrench that you will not have at the roadside 🙁

 

 

The super high torque impact wrench that most use is usually the most basic and cheapest 1/2″ drive tool available. It’s actual specs are about what you’d expect for £40(LINK), and are reliant on the compressor, air line, hose, fittings, tool and user’s optimism being up to scratch. They very rarely are! Spend £10 on a cheap extendable breaker bar and you’ll easily outperform one with your body weight.

My gripe with the tools supplied with most cars for wheel changes is the shitty quality; I’ve seen lots of wheel braces that have split as soon as some force is applied to them, assuming that the pressed steel jack didn’t bend while lifting the car. We won’t talk about the users who attempted to use the jack upside down, or the frequent need to beat the wheel off once the nuts have been loosened….

 

 

No, a breaker bar is not going to outperform even a cheap air driven impact wrench for loosening tight fasteners. The key is in the name – impact. An impact wrenct delivers impacts as well as torque. This gives tham a considerable advantage.

Robert.

[Nick Wheeler]

On Nick Wheeler Said:

The <em style=”font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;”>super high torque impact wrench that most use is usually the most basic and cheapest 1/2″ drive tool available. It’s actual specs are about what you’d expect for £40(LINK), and are reliant on the compressor, air line, hose, fittings, tool and user’s optimism being up to scratch. They very rarely are! Spend £10 on a cheap extendable breaker bar and you’ll easily outperform one with your body weight.

 

That air wrench looks very similar to the one I bought from the Snap-On man years ago when I was a mechanic, except they were silver and blue, We all had them. We all also had breaker bars because sometimes an air wrench couldn’t loosen some very tight nuts. 😉

[Vic]

On Vic Said:

On Nick Wheeler Said:

The <em style=”font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;”>super high torque impact wrench that most use is usually the most basic and cheapest 1/2″ drive tool available. It’s actual specs are about what you’d expect for £40(LINK), and are reliant on the compressor, air line, hose, fittings, tool and user’s optimism being up to scratch. They very rarely are! Spend £10 on a cheap extendable breaker bar and you’ll easily outperform one with your body weight.

 

That air wrench looks very similar to the one I bought from the Snap-On man years ago when I was a mechanic, except they were silver and blue, We all had them. We all also had breaker bars because sometimes an air wrench couldn’t loosen some very tight nuts. 😉

But Robert says that isn’t true. Every mechanic I know also keeps a breaker bar for the same reasons you did. I’ll say it again – the common, small, pistol type impact wrench’s reputation as a torque monster is largely undeserved, and is relatively easy to beat on an M12 wheel bolt. I’ve done hundreds of wheelchanges for customers who couldn’t undo the nuts using the car’s wrench and every one of them succumbed to a simple 750mm long 1/2 breaker bar.

I’m not going to claim that for the much larger 1″ drive guns you see truck-tyre fitters use….

[David George 1Participant @davidgeorge1]

The tyre sales outlet I use is an independant outfit and have used them for over 50 years. They tighten the wheel nuts with a low torque air gun and finnish with a torque wrench to manufactures settings. they have diferent jacks for diferant vehicles which some have rubber inserts to protect the sill etc. They dont overcharge and wouldn’t go anywhere else.

David

[mgnbukParticipant @mgnbuk]

I have not seen an air impact wrench in a tyre shop for years now – rechargeable electric equivalents seem to have supplanted them. A big H & S advantage to these is not having hoses crossing the workspace floor.

And for at least the last 10 years both national chains & independants have just snugged up the nuts with the impact gun (used mainly as a nut runner) with the final tightening done with a normal torque wrench when the car is sat back on it’s wheels. All have made a point of highlighting the need to recheck the nuts ater a couple of days when releiving me of my money & the paperwork signed shows this requirement. This is probably a get-out clause should a wheel fall off, as you can’t subsequently claim that you were not told to recheck the tightness of the nuts yourself.

I carry a “sticky string” tubeless repair kit with me to use in preference to the car maker supplied gunge. Cheap (around £4 delivered for a kit from Ebay), easy to use and no mess. I last used one a couple of months ago when my sister-in-law was unfortunate enough to get a puncture locally. The screw responsible was easly located, removed & replaced with a “sticky string” plug. As she was close to home I had charged up my compressor receiver & put that in the back of the car for a quick & easy refill, but I would expect that the supplied mini compressor would have done the job (just slower).

Still sooner have a spare of some sort (even a space saver), but the hybrid battery on my current car occupies the spare wheel well.

Nigel B.

[Grindstone CowboyParticipant @grindstonecowboy]

Just seen this advice in an article from Witshire police, may be of interest:

The advice is not to have a space saver on a front axle if the vehicle is front wheel drive. You should replace the flat tyre with a rear tyre so that the space saver is not at the front of the car.

Rob

[simondavies3Participant @simondavies3]

Given that most people carry a single car jack around with them, I would be interested to hear how that ‘advice’ is applied practically – and safely!

[Perko7Participant @perko7]

Re space-saver spares, a friend had a BMW Z3 I think, one of the earlier ones, which came with a space-saver spare. He and his girlfriend went scuba diving one Sunday with the scuba gear filling the limited boot space. On the way home they got a flat tyre, so he put on the space-saver spare but found he could not fit the flat full size rim-tyre combination in the space allocated for the space-saver spare. What to do? Option 1 – leave the scuba gear by the side of the road while he takes the girlfriend home then returns for the gear, Option 2 – leave the flat tyre by the side of the road while he takes the girlfriend home and then returns for the tyre, or Option 3 – leave the girlfriend by the side of the road while he takes the flat tyre home and then returns for her.

Eventually he chose option 4, load the scuba gear in the boot, sit the girlfriend in the car and she cradled the flat tyre in her lap for the trip home.

She wasn’t happy.

[simondavies3]

On simondavies3 Said:

Given that most people carry a single car jack around with them, I would be interested to hear how that ‘advice’ is applied practically – and safely!

Sounds like Dim-Witshire Police to me !

🙂

MichaelG.

[Michael Gilligan]

On Michael Gilligan Said:

On simondavies3 Said:

Given that most people carry a single car jack around with them, I would be interested to hear how that ‘advice’ is applied practically – and safely!

Sounds like Dim-Witshire Police to me !

🙂

MichaelG.

Err, is it difficult?   Two tyre swaps needed, but only one jack.   Am I missing something?

[V8EngParticipant @v8eng]

Jack up rear of car take wheel off & fit skinny, lower car, jack up front of car take wheel with puncture off and replace with wheel you have just taken off the rear, lower car (get girlfriend to cuddle tyre) and you’re good to go! Finally find replacement for girlfriend who just chucked you!

Or am I missing something?

Good luck with all that on a cold wet night!

Personally speaking I pay Green Flag annually to get me out of the doo-doo.

[Gary WoodingParticipant @garywooding25363]

I’m missing something here. My car has runflats. Is that bad?

[V8Eng]

On V8Eng Said:

Jack up rear of car take wheel off & fit skinny, lower car, jack up front of car take wheel with puncture off and replace with wheel you have just taken off the rear, lower car (get girlfriend to cuddle tyre) and you’re good to go! Finally find replacement for girlfriend who just chucked you!

Or am I missing something?

Good luck with all that on a cold wet night!

Fair comment.

[SillyOldDuffer]

On SillyOldDuffer Said:

On Michael Gilligan Said:

On simondavies3 Said:

Given that most people carry a single car jack around with them, I would be interested to hear how that ‘advice’ is applied practically – and safely!

Sounds like Dim-Witshire Police to me !

🙂

MichaelG.

Err, is it difficult?   Two tyre swaps needed, but only one jack.   Am I missing something?

Sorry, Dave … I don’t understand your reply

MichaelG.

.

Note: My own comment was only made in fun, because of the original reference to Witshire Police.

[Gary Wooding]

On Gary Wooding Said:

I’m missing something here. My car has runflats. Is that bad?

They’re only bad if the pressure monitoring system doesn’t work, or is ignored. Runflats are the same temporary get you home/to a garage solution as a space-saver spare. It’s possible to drive on a runflat long enough to completely destroy it just like any other tyre.

It’s not unusual to find a previous owner opted for cheaper ordinary tyres instead of new runflats when the time came…

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

Garages have improved greatly with using a torque wrench when doing up car wheels, back in the 70’s they didn’t bother. Even after correctly torquing up, after a while the nuts or bolts will be very hard to unscrew. I bought a 1/2″ drive ratchet the other week in Lidl which expands to getting on for 2 feet long, and it is in the back of my car.

I always carry a full size spare, the weight saving of no spare is more due to the manufacturers saving money than your fuel economy.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Today’s use of torque wrenches on wheel nuts by garages probably has more to do with fear of lawsuits and whether their insurance would cover them than anything else.

 

[V8Eng]

On V8Eng Said:

……. (get girlfriend to cuddle tyre) and you’re good to go! Finally find replacement for girlfriend who just chucked you!

…….

Does it work on wives? 😜

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, where I go for my tyre woes, they’ve always used a torque wrench, and they look up the settings, and adjust the wrench. As it happens, I’ve just this week received a new to me car, no spare wheel of any sort, just a pot of that sealant, and a compressor, which looks as it it’s never been used.

Regards Nick.

[NealebParticipant @nealeb]

Although I have been driving for the best part of 50 years, I reckon that the number of punctures I’ve had could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Maybe I’ve been lucky! For that reason, I have not worried too much about having no spare on my later cars, just can of sealant and an electic pump. However, the last puncture was around a year ago but the sealant worked well, the pump was a bit slow but did the job, and I could carry on until I could arrange a couple of new tyres (as the old ones were getting towards the end of life anyway). This afternoon, the “low pressure” warning came on so I checked the pressure. Down a little, but might just have been a paranoid pressure monitor so I dug out the pump to top up wth the intention of monitoring for a slow puncture. Problem was that the pump made a lot of noise but nothing went in the tyre. Eventually found that the nozzle that fits on the tyre had filled with the tyre sealant from the last time I used it and completely blocked it. As it happened, I had a bit of time to kill so sat with a pin and managed to dig out the old sealant and eventually managed to get it working again.

Moral of the story is – if you use the electric pump and sealant can as supplied with a number of modern cars, just give the pump a quick run to clear the nozzle before you put it away again!

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

^^^ Good point. Wouldn’t have thought of that until too late!

[Author]

Posts