Over torqueing wheel nuts.

If a tire shop overtorques wheel nuts to 800 lbs and the wheelstuds shear off in the first 50 miles is it the drivers fault?

 

This is a trick question, right?

How do you know they were over torqued?

 

If you've had a wheel change, it's up to the driver to do their due diligence to check that no wheel lugs are loose, there is no rust around the wheel lug nuts, and the lug nut washer is not spinning. It's up to the fleet manager and the tire shop to display a wheel retorque tag or brief you on whether or not a wheel change has happened but usually nobody cares enough to do this for you as a driver. Because of that I run those neon plastic indicators (the locking kind) on my steer tires so I know I have at least directional control when all hell breaks loose.

 

Guess it is best to carry a gear wrench and change the tires yourself like we did in the old days since the drivers responsible if tire shops don't know how to do it right.

 

My exact question as well.

 

I had a driver on an annual road test with a tractor that had just come out of the shop for it's CVI. We pretripped the truck and when we came to the back passenger wheels the driver was able to turn eight out of the ten lug nuts by hand. The mechanic had forgotten to tighten them.
Moral of the story is, do not trust anybody, do a complete pretrip whenever your truck has been in the care and control of somebody else.

 

Where would I be able to buy that 4' torque wrench...? And how much ft-lb do I need..? How much coin am I looking at roughly. Would be a good tool to have, I think.

I have tire shops do all my tire work, but I do watch them torque them down when done. Never asked how much ft-lb they're doing though.

 

Have you got Princess Auto out that way? I think they sell 3/4" drive torque wrenches. Not high end but for a backyard, use it once or twice a month kind of thing it'd probably last a few years easy.

I go 500 ft-lbs on hub pilot wheel nuts.

 

We do. In the big city a couple hours from the house.

Got my pickup truck now I need tools and an organized garage.
Also need a decent size compressor. Last one was a Cdn tire 20 gallon cheapo unit and it broke with minimal use after only 2 or 3 years.