I always question anyone, not just young greasemonkeys, using an air
wrench on my lug nuts. I was trying to get a lug nut off my old '77
Volvo once because I suspected that the garage had tightened them up
too much and I didn't want to get stuck by the side of the road and
can't get the wheel off. Tire iron couldn't budge it. So I grabbed a
socket and an 18" cracker handle and stood on that handle with all of
my 225 lbs. All I did was crack the socket! Had to drive it to a
(different) garage where they got it off with another air wrench. And
thank God for Swedish steel - the stud was still ok.
Jim Sudduth
jims@autodesk.com
'74 TR-6 CF20076U
Berkeley, CA USA
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: Winter Subject: Frozen Nuts (a la Barry..
Author: Tom Tweed <ak627@dayton.wright.edu> at smtpcc1
Date: 11/13/96 4:01 PM
Brian wrote:
>
>I did have a stud frozen to the wheel once. Actually, it was the lug nut
>frozen to the stud. Dumbsh*t tire jockey whizzed on the nuts with his high
>powered air wrench without assuring they were NOT CROSSTHREADED first. The
>spead and power of the wrench literally WELDED the nut to the stud. After
>breaking several air tools in an effort to remove, they found the bigest
>lever they could fit on the stoutest socket they could find. All it did was
>round off the nut.
>
>You guessed it, they had to get a power saw and saw the wheel off the car
>(lots of destruction). They made good on it all to me. But it shows what
>kind of trouble a business owner can get into when they hire the lowest wage
>people. That poor shop owner ate a lot of margin to make up for that one
>doofus's mistake.
>
>It was a nice alloy wheel, too.
>
>Brian
...Which reminded me of various instances of similar damage to cars I've
owned over the years, though none so serious as Brian's, but all inflicted
by some kid with an air wrench, using it to tighten nuts.
Now that our LBCs are getting on in years, and spares and salvage parts
may be hard to find for some applications, here's my advice:
Let the kid use the air gun for taking off anything he wants to, they're
great at that, that's what they were made for. But don't let him tighten
anything with the air gun unless he will start the threads by hand, and
do the final tightening by hand, using either a torque wrench or his cal-
ibrated arm, if he's experienced. If he balks at this request, ask him
for his home phone number so you can call him to come out and change your
flat tire, 'cause his chatter-gun hammered the lug nuts on with 200 lb ft
of torque (enough to warp a brake rotor on an Escort, for example).
There, I feel better now, hope this is useful to someone.
Tom Tweed
SW Ohio
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