I ALWAYS take my rims off my car and haul them down to tire shops when I need new tires (often). I've found that you can't trust anyone even to perform the simplest tasks. Today was a perfect example:

A friend has new tires put on her Evo. I tell her to swing by afterwards so I can check the torque on her studs - sure enough they were WAY overtightened. We're talking 116+ lbs.

What the hell? obviously someone used an impact wrench, but c'mon--even with an impact wrench you can get close--especially if that's your fing job. But 40lbs over?

What kind of damage/long term effects will this have? Are all the studs stretched beyond the point at which they've lost fatigue resistance? Will they slowly start to pop off one by one? Am I just being too paranoid?

 

iz should be ok.

 

Maybe not.....

Your post indicates you have a lot less knowledge of torque then the poster on the original thread. Torque in actuality is a function of bolt stretch. The technical question is did the overtorque reach yield strength. The point at which the bolt goes beyond stretch it can recover from and the bolt takes a permanent set. Future torques will result in lug failure. No way to tell. But if the torques were that far over I think you should document it for management so if a future failure occurs it can be financially compensated.

Utah

 

So why didn

 

Exactly what I was thinking.

 

Ok. Just so that I can be accepted, let me retract the iz part and change it to

 

Personally, I think all of you are over-reacting. 99% of the cars on the road today don't have their lugs properly torqued, just hammered on with an impact gun by some teenager at the local tire chain. I'm sure I'll get flammed for saying this but whatever. How many cars do you actually see on the side of the road after loosing a wheel? Of course every once in a while, but its pretty rare (most seem to be old cars, culprit in my guess is probably rust).

 

So 80 lbs is correct torque?

 

Yes, some are torquing to 85 to 90 ft-lbs as 80 just seems a little light. 80 ft-lbs is the factory spec though.

 

I watched as some grease monkeys install some wheels/tires on my old 86 Acura Legend. They used a 1/2" impact and I saw them just lay into the lugs. Probably a good 3 seconds of full torque after the nuts were tight.

I went home to re-torque. I have a 1/2" impact that is rated to 250 ft/lbs at 90 psi. I was able to get most of them off, but I had to use the highest setting. The last one did not budge so I go a 1/2 breaker bar and promptly twisted the *STUD* right off.

On my nicer cars, I simply load the wheels and tires into another car and take just the wheels to tire shops to have them do work. Then I don't have to worry about the scratching the pain around the lug holes and over-torquing. I don't trust tire shops any more. They always seem to do more harm than good.

HTH

Jeff