Premiere Toyota service

TOTAL BULLSHIT!!!!!!

I have had a shop not tighten the nuts correctly or had "a failure in their impact gun" TWICE in my life.

Both times I lost wheel on the highway at speed and thankfully lived to tell about it.

Mike

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Tegger, why do you change your car's oil so often, every

Because if you are on 4 jackstands like the OP insists on doing and put torque on the nuts, the odd are 'really' high the car will not be on those stands any longer...

Mike

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Mike Romain, you are now playing rhetorical games like Mike A. I pointed out that "Auto Upkeep" recommends using anti-seize on the wheel bolt threads, but that my Camry manual does not mention the use of anti-seize, so I won't use any (even though Ray_O has mentioned using it between the hub and mounting surface of the inner wheel).

Mike Romain, you, however, are /not/ following standard procedure by using only one stand in the rear end of the car and the jack in the front end when rotating tires. Correct procedure is to always use stands in pairs, and not to have just one side of the car (the left or right side) in the air. It's okay to have one end of the car (the front end or the rear end) in the air, but not okay to have just one side of the car in the air (the left or the right side).

You're also using the jack to support the vehicle.

You're violating not one, but three rules of safe tire rotating procedure. Three.

Built_Well wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@v23g2000prn.googlegroups.com:

Wife doesn't drive much (it's her car). Water builds up, oil rarely gets hot enough to drive it all off.

I use Castrol GTX 5W-30 in that car.

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Oh, I see. I guess if the oil never gets hot enough to boil off the water and acids, it takes a toll on the oil.

Why do you Because if you are on 4 jackstands and put torque on the nuts, the odds are 'really' high the car will not be on those stands any longer... ____________________________________________

Holy crap! I never knew that. Does that apply to the $140 jackstands, or just the $10 Harbor Freight units?

Rodan.

Methinks you're going too far with this one. I've never seen a jack stand, or for that matter a hydraulic lift, jack, or other lifting tool that wouldn't show a mark when hit with a five-pound hammer. Hell, a five-pound hammer will leave a mark on another five-pound hammer.

Yup.

Mike

well another good reason is that you can't tighten the lug nuts because the wheels will spin freely.

nate

If the 'book' is full of s*it on something as major as wheel lug nut tightness, the 'rest' is just as much garbage....

You seem to want to take the 'best' of everything and mix them up. Real life doesn't work that way usually.

Reasons for this have been beaten to death already.

You should read your owners manual for the directions on changing a flat tire....

Just 'what' book's 'rules' am I violating and just 'who' wrote those rules? The folks that sell jackstands? You seem to find a new 'book' every time I log on.

You also never did answer what 'surface' you will be jacking on? If driveway asphalt like most people, you will soon find out just how 'stable' 4 jackstands under a car really are.

Mike

Oh, of course it will. But what does the mark look like? That's the tell-tale. Not as good as putting the metal on a grinder and looking at the sparks, of course...

--scott

Well sure, if you drive a vehicle that always sounds and feels like the wheels are falling off you aren't going to be able to tell when they really are.

-jim

For weekend and NASCAR mechanics, Craftsman, Blackhawk, SK, etc., are good enough most of the time. They're cheap enough and get the job done. They usually have a life-time warranty.

When I was taking apart engines in high and college for my dad, who rebuilt engines, I used mostly SK tools. They made high impact sockets for the air ratchets that almost never failed. And the regular sockets and stuff were good enough for what I needed. And dad was an SK dealer, so getting replacement tools wasn't a big deal.

For professional mechanics, Mac and Snap-On are even cheaper. They let the mechanic work faster. And the mechanic doesn't have to return the tools for new ones under warranty. Time is money. Mac and Snap-On let the mechanic spend his/her time working on vehicles, not replacing tools. Saves money in the long run.

I am curious how good the new Colbalt Tools for Home Depot are.

Jeff

These companies rebadge tools from other sources. Some of them are good and some of them are bad. The Craftsman miniature screwdriver sets are from Wiha and are just fine. Their boltcutters from China and are not fine.

Some of the SK stuff is excellent, some is not.

I'll also say that I buy the crappy quality Taiwanese high impact sockets... which I would never dare use on an impact wrench, but which are dirt cheap and well-enough hardened to use with hand tools. They are cheap, and if you use them for something they can handle, they're fine. If you actually put one on an impact wrench you might well get injured.

For the most part this is try, but WHY don't either one of these guys make small box wrenches with really long handles? Why do I have to go to the airplane tool guys (which charge a LOT more than Mac and Snap-On) for such things? Also, the Snap-On flexible socket wrenches are kind of poorly made compared with the German ones.

They are cheap, not very well finished, but seem okay. I have a couple breaker bars from them which have held up okay to abuse.

--scott

I'm pretty sure Kobalt (misspelling part of the trademark) tools are made by the same tool foundry that makes the "good" Craftsman tools (not the low-end crap that is polluting the Craftsman line these days. They're also sold at Lowes, not Home Depot. Home Depot's tool line is "Husky" and I am not as favorably impressed with them as I am with Kobalt.

thanks.

Today, I saw the best "lower price" floor jack yet. It's a Husky at Home Depot for $40, and it lifts all the way to 22 inches! It supports 3 tons, not like the

In this price range, I thought I would have been limited to 15.5 inches of lift at the most, but Home Depot and Husky came through with 22 inches! Nobody lifts that high for that little.

I would have preferred buying the $65 3.5-ton Michelin floor jack at Sam's Club, but that sucker is big and heavy. I need something transportable since I'm living in an apartment, and can't work on the car in our parking lot, according to the contract.

I guess I gotta be like a guerilla mechanic and find some place out of the way to work. Where have my fellow guerilla mechanics found are good places to work? Parking lots of neglected shopping centers? Deserted, dead-end streets?

I'm wondering about this $80 Craftsman torque wrench I picked up from Sears. How often do you all get your home wrenches recalibrated? Never? Once a year? Is it cost-prohibitive to get'em recalibrated? If not, where would you go to get'em recalib'ed?

This Craftsman only has a one-year warranty, but I'm sure re-calibrating is not part of the warranty. The Husky torque wrench at Home Depot (made in Taiwan) has a lifetime warranty, as does the O'Reilly wrench with the brandname "Precision Tool." The AutoZone torquer only has a 3-month warranty.

Forget answering the question about recalibrating torque wrenches. I just read Tegger's informative FAQ on torquers. $75 to re-calibrate one! Like Tegger, I'll just buy a new one.

Tegger, a lot of people have spun loose that model 44595 from Sears. So I don't think it's your fault for damaging your original. Read the reviews for that wrench at sears.com. Whole bunch of folks complaining about that torquer.