What do others do

Buy a 12 volt rattle gun., or ask the tyre mob to only use a hand wheel brace to tighten your nuts??

Yeah, depending on whether the apprentice did 'em up, they could fall off or snap from being too tight.

I bought a set of free wheeling hubs today to replace the crap auto hubs on the GU, and when I did the left one, the bolts were reasonably tight and everything was clean [just had the wheel bearings re-greased] while on the right side the bolts were so tight I couldn't believe it and there was so much grease it was falling out as I took off the FWhubs.

Obviously the boss did one side and the apprentice did the other.

Smear of grease on each of the studs.

First thing I do after having tyres fitted is take off the nuts, put a drop of oil on the studs, and retighten by hand. Check them a couple of days later. Never had a problem with stuck nuts, and never lost a nut. You get a feel for how tight they should be done by hand.

I have had to use the hand winch handle as a "breaker" bar before to get enough leverage - complained to the tyre place on my next visit and they had said they were aware of the problem, and had replaced a particular rattle gun. This time the nuts were correctly tightened - but I always loosen and retighten by hand anyway.

Every nut on your vehicle has a recommended tension .... for a reason!

I had tyres fitted a few years ago, before I took the car I asked who fitted the wheels back on the car, I got the genuine wheel wrench out of the boot & asked him to undo a nut ....... Guess what?

I always kept a piece of pipe, only about 12" long, behind the seats of the Cruisers. 1" pipe was the right size to go over the wheel spanner. That was enough to assist me undoing the wheel nuts. I could jump on it if i couldn't undo them with this little bit of extra leverage.

The tyre service used to hate it when i came in after my guys had done them up by hand - always too tight and hard to undo - they just don't know their own strength. No wonder i needed the piece of pipe.

Get one of the 12v rattle guns.

I had to do a diff seal last week, and I tried to undo the nut with my Supercrap air impact gun but the nut just laughed at it.

Bugger, thought I, and then remembered the Shentai. The nut stopped laughing.

Same applies to wheel nuts - they are easily removed with these babies no matter how tightly the moron at the tyre place screwed them up.

Only $79.00 or so, a must have tool.

A mate with a puncture on his troopy north of Dargo couldn't release his nuts. I got out the Shentai and he looked at it and laughed, but he didn't laugh for long when it took the nuts off with a few slaps.

Hi Brian,
I use a torque wrench. Once you've done this once, you'll realise just how overtight guys with rattle guns do them up. The tyre dealer I take my business to gets his guys to use a torque wrench as well. After I get my vehicle serviced I always back off the nuts and retorque them just to make sure I don't get stuck with nuts that can't be undone when on the road.

Hugh

Maybe you need to put on a pit a of weight LOL

Before you go on a trip try loosing all wheel nuts off and then torquing them up to the correct torque

This way you can only balm yourself

Richard

Hello,

Before you do the big trip use the T/wrench on the wheels as a part of pre trip preparation.

You know the well known adage if you want the job done well do it yourself.

Search for a thread where 10.30pm night before a long weekend trip, I was stuck in the driveway last wheel, last nut and the crossbrace snapped the nut was that tight.

This was the same day I had new tires fitted and they must have rattlegunned the nuts on there for hours to get em that tight..

ended up gettin Crazie to come to the rescue with his compressor and rattle gun*
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*shut up adam.