evident

took my RX350 in for the mandatory annual PA State inspection at my trusty local mechanic last friday. Told me i had the state minimum on the front brakes. I already purchased the parts last year so decided to do the job myself on saturday. when i went to take my wheels off the front axles, I had a multitude of issues. first bolt, I was unable to remove with my 1/2" breaker bar, so i decided to use the spare tire wrench with a 3 ft pipe as leverage. to my surprise, the spare tire bar bent about 15 degrees before it finally removed the bolt.

next bolt, I was completely unable to get the spare tire wrench onto the bolt, as it was stripped. I did some research online and ended up having to blow torch the bolt, and mallet on one of my sockets and was able to get them off that way. in total, on the front axle 4 out of 8 of my bolts were completely stripped and jacked up. (other 2 were the lock nuts), and they were all torqued beyond what the spare tire wrench and breaker bar could remove easily.

I'm not sure how to approach the shop. the last time the car has the wheels removed was last year's state inspection, done by the same shop. they could have stripped the bolts then. But i remembered that even before that, I had the tires replaced at costco, so i can't guarantee that the bolts werent stripped already. what do i do? I would like to remain on good terms with this shop as they've never screwed me before but I want to show them how bad they messed up my bolts and turned a 2 hour brake job into an all day *****fest.
luckily the local toyota dealer parts shop is open on saturdays and i purchased an entire brand new set.

my IS350 is up for inspection this month but i'm i'm taking it to the lexus dealership to fix a rattle.

UDel

Sorry to hear about that. I have no idea why some shops feel the need to over torque lug nuts so much, it is infuriating. How do hey expect the owner to be able to change out a flat on the side of a road, especially a older person. I always make sure to tell shops not to over tighten my wheel lugs and just hand tighten them.

jimbosr1

i seen shops put wheels on and use a air gun without a torque stick cranked to the max.

bagwell

funny, last week I actually used crapmart - I mean walmart to have my tires re-balanced ($7.50/tire) on the WRX and specifically asked if the guy could use a torque wrench to 87 ft-lbs instead of the air ratchet cranked up and he said said no problem - when I came back I re-torqued every lug nut and they were all good (a miracle!)....especially since I didn't sit there and watch them like I normally do!!! - there was like a 3 hour wait.

geko29

Highly unlikely that Costco did it. They're required to hand-torque.

For places who are too lazy to look up torque specs and do it by hand, I still don't see why they wouldn't use torque sticks. Even if they don't change to the right one for each car, they'd only be off the spec by a little bit (<20 lbft), as opposed to using an unrestricted impact gun and going over spec by 100+ lbft. Guess they just don't care.

chikoo

If you don;t know which shop did it for sure, tough luck bugalugs (that is a new term I just picked up as I started to watch Murdoch Mysteries)

evident

at this point im pretty certain its them. I'm going to stop by after work and ask them to loosen my rear wheels so i dont have to struggle with them when i do my rear brakes tomorrow.