OMFG I'm about to snap!!!!
 

One of my regular customers came in this morning to swap his rims and tires and as I was removing the wheel bolts on his 91 350SD all but 7 bolts snapped at the head. I asked him who tightened the wheels and it was a tire shop that put on the new tires and didn't torque the wheels. Now I'm going to spent most of the day drilling these dame bolts out. :mad:

Yikes. How close is the tire shop? I think after the first one, or two, or three, I'd have driven or towed it over there and given it back to them.
With the heads snapped off, they might come out easily.

bummer... hope you have extra drill bits, chisel and hammer maybe?

I had a shop twist a lug off a F250. The guy said "how about if we leave it until we do your brakes"? I said "Brakes are fine. How about fixing it now?" I now take a torq wrench if I don't know that the shop uses one. If they do, I ask what they show as the specs.

Generally if the head snaps off of all of them, shouldn't the stud then be loose in the hub once you take the wheel off? They'd just be sitting in the holes....

FWIW Costco ALWAYS uses a torque wrench. I was very surprised by this and have found the to be the best deal around for tires once you throw in lifetime rotate balance hazard and nitrogen.

Went to Valvoline for an inspection, they use a set of torque sockets and a clicker wrench. Walmart has a set of gorillas they mount tires with.

How tight to you have to get one of those to snap off? He had the Gen2 flat face wheels, right? Those use a stepped lug bolt... they're like 2 bolts glued together so the bolt head is flush with the wheel.

-J

M-B has produced a few lug bolt designs that are absolute jokes. There is a narrow shaft, several inches long, between the ball seat and the hex head. This is where they break. Not only isn't the wheel coming off, the ball seat is way back in the hole.

The W210 came with these as well. They look nice in the wheels, as the hex heads are about flush with the surface of the rim, but it's better for the heads to be recessed than the alternative.

Oh yes.....one of our SD's has those type of lugs/wheels. That would be horrible. :eek: Its actually going back to stock wheels in the spring because the ride is not pleasant with bigger/heavier wheels.

Our '96 E300D came with those; I bought the shorter bolts that don't sit flush with the edge of the wheel. Much safer and they don't look bad at all.

OTOH, I used the leftover long bolts when I put 16" W210 10-spoke wheels on my '87 300D Turbo but I always use a torque wrench and no one else touches the wheels. Whenever I remove the bolts, I wire brush them before they go back in. So far, so good, but I remain cautious. Incidentally, the long bolts have over 250,000 miles on them and have been handled by who knows what kind of people over the life of the car. Maybe some of the the long bolts were made from better grades of steel?

Jeremy

I just replaced my rear brake hoses on my 86 300sdl and I knew that the rear wheels had not been off in over a year. My tires were rotated by a local shop one year ago and they use an air wrench normally, except when I come in and then they use a torque wrench. This last time though, I could not get the wheel bolts off. It was a pure struggle with a breaker bar, but I finally got them and found that the bolts had rusted to the inside of the rotor. I cleaned them up with a wire brush and used some anti-seize on the and hopefully this will not happen again.

Friend of mine snapped off a lug bolt in my '59 vw. It came right out with a left hand drill bit.

Snapped the head off, '83. If the ball seat remains intact and still torqued against the rim, it won't come out so easily.

I had a tire pulled off a rim today ( the rim was bent) to put the good tire on a good rim. When the shop put the tire back on the tech started tightening in a circle and I stopped him to ask he tighten in a star pattern. He said this was not the first set of tires he's installed- yet continued to tighten in a circle. :rolleyes: I knew what to expect when he brought out the air tools and I insisted he NOT use them.