Tire Shop Damaged Wheel Studs

[Garak]

Originally Posted by HangFire
If you get nowhere, take it to another shop and tell them to assess and document the damage. You could even be clever and go to another Mr. Tire and tell them that a different chain did the damage. Then take the estimate for repair back to the original Mr. Tire.

That is a pretty good idea.

 

[RayCJ]

Update: Called the corporate customer assistance number twice today. Got the answering machine both times. Left message and call-back number on the first call. No return call yet.

 

[RayCJ]

Another update:

Corporate Customer Service (at Mr. Tire) does not seem to answer the phone and their system put me on silent hold and it eventually hung-up the call. This happened twice. I called the place that did the damage, spoke to the manager and did not get a satisfactory outcome. LOL: He made the following statement which I find ridiculous... [He asked me, do you know what a torque wrench is? It's a wrench that tightens to a specific amount. He then said, he personally checks and inspects every tire that goes out of the shop]. LOL: The place has about 5 or 6 bays. I call that BS.

Anyhow, I was completely calm and factual and he became very defensive and insinuated the damage was done by someone else. I didn't want to ruin my day (or his) so, I just asked him to provide a direct phone number to someone in corporate customer service. Phone went silent for 1-2 minutes and he came back and said he would fix just the broken stud. No good I told him. Reminded him that 30" of breaker bar was needed to remove all 20 nuts and that all the studs were stretched well beyond their yield limit. He dug his heels in and said he would replace just the one stud. Hid demeanor was confrontational and accusatory and it was apparent he was going to snow-ball out of control.

OK, fine... I don't want this place (Mr. Tire, Gambrills, MD) to touch my car so, I'll replace all 20 studs myself. I'll buy a whole set of lug-nuts because purchasing a single one is $15 and a whole set is $18 (go figure). I will also refresh my Yelp review and will create as many online reviews as I can -and I will update and renew the postings for the looooong foreseeable future. It's going to cost me $60 in parts and 2 hours of my time. The cost to them -a lot more.

Ray

 

[HangFire]

Definitely try the Yelp thing, but good luck with that. After an obvious auto shop rip-off I reported on Yelp, my review got buried/hidden as unreliable and an obvious fake glowing review (which almost point for point countered mine) suddenly showed up. This after years of almost no Yelp activity on this shop.

 

[RayCJ]

Another update: The last time I posted about this here, I also filed a complaint about Mr. Tire to the BBB. My only request was to get $60 reimbursement for new studs and lug nuts. Apparently, on 12/7 Mr Tire's representative contacted the BBB claiming they could not reach me because they could not find my voicemail messages in the corporate phone system. Today, I received an automated response from the BBB saying the case was closed because I failed to respond. LOL... Can you say: "Shyster" ???

 

[Jarlaxle]

Originally Posted by slacktide_bitog
Most tire shops zip it too tight with an airgun. Overtorqued, uneven torque doing lots and lots of damage

That's why you have to find the places that use correct torque. Walmart and DT are known to use correct torque

Town Fair, too.

 

[bdcardinal]

The BBB is absolutely useless, I worked at a place who paid for an A+ rating and the BBB would always side with us on any issue.

 

[RayCJ]

...

Conclusion of this event...

After Mr. Tire over-tightened all 20 lugnuts causing extreme difficulty to remove them during my normal tire rotation, I wrote them off and gave them bad write-ups on Yelp.com. Mind you, all of the lugnuts were making creaking and squeaking noises as I removed them and I suspected the ones that didn't snap were stretched and damaged. Shortly after the event, I replaced at my own expense all the lugnuts and studs.

Today, I got around to checking a handful of the old studs. The studs were M12x1.5. Measuring with a pitch micrometer, the base part of the threads were WAY coarser than the tip of the stud. I have thread wire mics but didn't feel like going that far to get a precise pitch reading. No point... I just used a 2-point pitch mic and I could see they were stretched. I'll take a wild guess they were near 1.7 to 1.75 mm/thread. This means they were significantly stretched. At the area where they appeared to be most stretched, I cut them in half, filed/polished the end and did an acid etch test. After two minutes, it was clear as a bell... there were radial cracks forming and the discoloration of the etch was uneven from outside to inside. BTW: This test method is commonly used to check the integrity of welded joints and is a destructive test used in forensic analysis.

Moral of the story. Don't trust a tire shop and watch the tech like a hawk. If you think the studs on your car have been grossly over-tightened, replace them.

Ray