Originally posted by: Skoorb
Originally posted by: Pliablemoose
Originally posted by: Skoorb
Something I've meant to ask is this - whenever I jack my cars up I have them always in first gear, but absolutely nothing is preventing the wheels from spinning. They spin into oblivion, which makes it hard undoing lugnuts sometimes - why is that? Going with that line of thinking, my leaving them in gear would be pointless when I park (I do anyway though).
I jack the car up just enough to leave enough pressure to keep the tire from spinning, loosen the lugnuts, give teh jack a couple more cranks, then spin the wheel & take off the nuts the rest of the way off by hand, or just spin the 4 way lug wrench to take them off the rest of the way. Re tighten the same way, but I use a torque wrench since that whole all 4 wheels coming off my van cuz some asshole handed me metric lug nuts with an impact tool & the end over end thing I did
You haven't lived till you flip a full size van end over end @ ~40 mph.
Huh? What happened with your wheels coming off?! Lugs were overtightened or what? I think its sage for anybody who gets their wheels taken off and put back on anywhere but their own garage to re-screw them theirselves, so that they can get it off should they have a flat. In my limited experience it's impossible to use the tire-changing kit on the lugs after a lot of these places take 5 thousand pounds of torque onto them
I put some take-off rims on my van that I'd purchased from a guy who scavanges/swaps new rims. Did it @ his shop myself to save some $, the existing lug nuts' shoulders were too small, so he handed me a box of new factory GM lug nuts & an air impact tool. I put them on, got about 40 miles away, was thinking about pulling over & re-tightening them, when I noticed a tire/rim passing me on the road, it was my tire & rim... The extra vibration'shudder caused @ least 2 more rims to come off a split second later, & my van swung around ass first into a center curb/median on divided road, there was just enough energy left to launch me end over end X2, coming to rest in the center median about 20 feet short of a hispanic work crew that was planting trees. They were pretty impresed (& happy that I didn't land on them like Dorothy's house in the Wizard of Oz).
The rim scalper guy had handed me metric lug nuts & I couldn't tell they didn't snug up bacause I was using an unfamiliar impact tool that prob, stripped the treads enough to keep the rims in place for 40 miles worth of driving.
I talked to a lawyer & we looked into it, but since I had essentially done it to myself, insurance covered the van & it would have ruined the guy's life, I didn't sue.
Cliff notes:
Buy a torque wrench
Always torque your lug nuts
Pliablemoose is as beat up as the neighborhood tomcat, but has a charmed life...
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