GROAN.........More Pigeons......

NOT having good Kar Karma the last few days. Probably lost a whole lotta Kar Karma points for leaving the poor Supra sit outside for five months, but that's past.

The tire store my wife got her snow tires from wanted $78 to swap out the mounted snow tires for her OEM aluminum rims and tires. I thought $20 a corner was a bit high, so I told her I'd do it.

The two rears came off no problem, but the left front lug nuts felt "funny" as I unscrewed them. Normally you bust them loose with a big breaker bar or an impact, and then they just spin right off. I started smelling something rotten when I had to use my impact to get them completely off the studs, and that 'aint right!

Before I even tried mounting the tire I tried a "test fit" of the lug nuts I just took off.

NONE of them would screw on the bare stud by hand. Closer inspection showed three of the lug nuts had the lead thread mashed up, and all 5 of them showed signs of thread distortion, most likely due to excessive tightening torque.

So out comes the rethreading set (my wife is starting to understand why I have two full size rolling cabinets with two full size top boxes), the metric thread pitch gauge, the dial caliper, and some tapping oil. Yeah, I could have looked up the thread size on-line, but I have the tools to figure it out, I'm not time constrained, and doing it will calm me down a bit over what I'm feeling for the person that did this. Plus I enjoy doing that kind of thing.

An Extreme Rookie Mistake was made, and I've seen people fired at auto and tire shops for doing it. And if the person doing it was an Extreme Rookie, it also becomes a management mistake for allow that person to work on a car without proper supervision.

Turns out it's a 12x1.5 thread, so I start running the die over the studs, and then the tap into the lug nuts. Flush the chips out of and off them, and do the next.....

Took me a good hour to rethread the 5 lug nuts and wheel studs, but now the nuts spin right down on the studs like they supposed to. Three of the nuts showed signs of leading thread damage, which almost always happens when you use an impact wrench to start the nuts on the studs.

Doesn't wanna fit? Mash the nut into the stud and hold down the trigger on the impact. It'll start sooner or later.......

Le Big Sigh......

Only one damaged nut and stud on the right front, so maybe the goober that did the first corner had some oversight on the rest.

All four OEM wheels and tires are back on the car, properly torqued to 80 ft-lbs, and the tires aired to 34PSI.

What would have normally taken 90 minutes wound up taking four hours.

And that tire store has lost TWO customers forever........