Button bashing in practice for another round of Daley Thompson's
Decathlon, Judith <
[email protected]> left Shakespeare
to the monkeys by typing...
>On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 22:14:31 +0100, Steve Taylor
><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>Do they do house calls ? I can't GET the bastards off mine
>
>I bought a set of tyres at Billing and, as directed on the invoice,
>checked the wheel nuts after 30 minutes. I'll be beggared if I can
>move any of them in any direction. That's the problem with compressed
>air tools...... have any of these tyre fitters ever heard of the
>correct torque rating for the wheel studs on a Disco alloy rim? Ha!
>Don't be daft.
>
>Judith
Aren't garages legally required to set the correct torque for wheelnuts?
Some companies do rated bars for air guns (Snap-On for one) for correct
torque. When I worked in a garage we used a torque wrench (well, I did).
The constant battering and overtightening can do strange things to alloy
wheels (work-hardening, stress fractures etc) which can eventually lead
to a saucer-size wheel centre and the rest of the wheel gaily sailing
off into the blue yonder (and they usually shear when loaded up -
cornering - and it's usually on the outside of whatever corner you're
attempting - autoengage brown-trouser mode!....)
My favourite air gun story (Not guilty - I was watching!)was a mid-70's
911turbo with a puncture came in on a Sat. Afternoon. Wheel off, fix
puncture, gun first nut on. Nut contacts wheel and keeps spinning. Same
with nuts 2 & 3. Thinking swiftly before more damage was done, said
'fitter' ('big-hammer-equipped-butcher' is perhaps more accurate) ran
over and asked why this might be. I suggested that alloy wheelnuts might
be torqued to a slightly lesser amount than his usual delicate 'max'
setting and that he may have stripped the threads. I also pointed out
that the FPDSH vehicle wouldn't be moving for a while and that these
wheelnuts aren't considered important enough to be 'stock items' by some
Porsche dealers, but that they could probably be ordered first thing on
Monday to arrive sometime within the next week or so and that the owner
was well within his rights to bill the garage for genuine replacement
wheelnuts (ouch), tow to (and replacement by) Porsche dealer (OUCH) and
the hire of an equivalent (same) vehicle for the duration (OUCH!!!).
Oh, and don't use copaslip on wheelnuts - it allows artificially high
torque to be achieved leading to overtightening of wheel nuts - Ford's
Motorsport dept (don't know the official name - RS/AVO whatever they
called it) head during the building of one of the Lotus Cortina's
explained this in a Craptical Plastics magazine about 15 years ago.
Thick oils can lead to hydraulic splitting (on capped nuts), but WD40
(Waste of space for anything IMO - try PlusGas in the same contexts as
WD to see the difference) or similar (3-in-1 etc) is ok.
--
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| I so did it again |
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