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.

[Author]

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