This was the day that I was going to put on the new rims and tires that I got from the TireRack. Given that the weather was fall-like, it didn’t bother me to waste a bit of sunshine on some automotive work. Putting on a set of rims that have already been mounted and balanced should be about a 30 minute job for anyone with a jack and the advanced knowledge of “lefty loosey, righty tighty.”

I was rather excited about the prospect of the tire swap for the following reasons:

1. I have Eagle G/Ts on the fronts, which are all season, but could not make it up a 5% grade in snow. These tires S-U-C-K. The new ones are Dunlops, which have been my tire of choice for the last 4 sets.
2. My stock Acura rims weigh 15 lbs each. The new rims weigh 8 lbs. That’s half the rotational weight, which translates to improved acceleration
3. New tools, baby!

I estimated that the prep for the transfer was going to take a bit of time, because I was going to buy a set of locking nuts for the hub, and I wanted to pick up a torque wrench. That meant a drive out to Dedham to get the locking nuts at Claire Acura, and a trip to Sears tool department. The 3/8″ drive torque wrench was about $70 and the locking nuts were around $50, and cost about 2 hours of drive time.

I got the car into the garage at an angle as there is a piano partially blocking one side, and some kayaks on the other. Guided in by my beautiful assistant, I got in enough that I could do three out of four tires, the fourth being blocked by the piano. You’re thinking that this is going to go bad just because of the piano, aren’t you? Yes you are. I can see it in your face. Well, the hell with that, naysayer. You’ll see. The piano had nothing to do with it.

Front Driver’s side: I borrowed a floor jack (mine’s in storage), got the drivers front tire off, smoothed the contact surface, counted my nuts (1, 2, etc.), removed the warning stickers, and mounted tire number one, torqued to owners manual specification. 10 minutes.

Front passenger side: Push like a mother on nut #1…then 2…then 3…then 4. None Budge. I stand on breaker bar. It bends. I stand on torque wrench. It breaks. I pace. I borrow another 3/8″ breaker bar. It breaks. I use all my mighty strength on a typical 4 way breaker, and manage to loosen…

One nut. One lousy nut.

I check all the other tires. With some work, they loosen, but the passenger front will not budge. As it’s really unsafe to drive with tires with different treads, I had to take my freshly mounted driver’s side tire off, and replace the stock tire. By then, it was 5 PM. I headed down to a gas station to see if they could use a pneumatic drill to crank the lugs off. After 15 minutes at the first station, it was evident that the guy did not have a 19mm lug. No mechanics are around at 6 on a Saturday, but if I gave up, the simple process of swapping out a set of tires had beaten me.

That could not happen.

As the girlfriend was with me at the time, this was a bad time to start losing my mind. I started driving in circles torn between the ideas of finding another garage, racing up to Auto Zone and buying the biggest goddamned breaker bar hopefully with a blow torch attachment, or heading home, giving up, and trying to recover the evening. Grudgingly, I agreed to give it up. Physically, I was heading home. Mentally, I was buying a flamethrower. As I sat at a light watching a truck pull past me, I mumbled rather incoherently, and heard the girlfriend yell, “STOP!” As I wanted to stop thinking about it, I thought this was a good idea and…

BANG!

She was not telling me to stop mumbling but to stop the car, and the truck wasn’t going forward. I was going backward. I had rolled backward into a brand new BMW 325. Yep. Not good. I got out apologized to the lady and began looking at her bumper. There was no damage, but I offered her my papers, anyway. She refused, so I offered my phone number in case she found something when she got home. She refused that, too. The she asked if I was new to driving the car. Oy. I told her that I was just having a very bad day, to which she replied that she hoped that it got better.

From there, I thought that things had to look up. Rather than helping me to torch the car and buy a new BMW, the GF dialed up Sears to see when their auto center was open. It was open until 10. They said that they could take the tire off, but it would be a couple of hours. Cool. The day was looking up. Instead of a fiery wreck, we had a plan. I showered, and we headed out.

I returned my torque wrench for a replacement, but they didn’t have a replacement for the borrowed broken breaker. I would have to come back on Monday. Feeling good about the hassle-free return, we headed for automotive to have the lugs loosened. When we got there, they refused the car saying that they could end up snapping the posts, and they wouldn’t have time to fix it. They were being real dicks, too. Because the tires had been off a week before, I knew that the posts hadn’t seized, but had been merely torqued on too tight, so I told them that I didn’t care if they snapped them. If they snapped them, I’d take a cab home. Big deal. I just needed them to try.

One guy stepped up and said he’d take care of it, despite the dirty looks of the other mechanic there. He had the lugs off in about 5 minutes. When asked what should be done next, I told him to put them back on with a torque wrench, and I thanked him profusely. He didn’t charge me a dime. It was 8 PM.

From there, the joyous couple went to the restaurant formerly known as Brew Moon. I can’t remember what it’s called now, and god knows what it will be called next month. The appetizers were good, the key lime pie was great, and everything in the middle was expectedly fair. The facially elf-like waitress provided excellent service, and was compensated justly. I love great service. From there, we returned a movie that was most likely late, and headed home.

The saga was over for the day.

Sunday morning, I got off one of the tires and realized that a metal wire in the new tire had remained behind when I had replaced the original rim, scratching the crap out of the mounting surface. Oy. No biggie. I got still got all four rims on in record time. My assistant had lugs ready, and provided me with manly necessities like water to spill all over the place, coffee to spill on my shirt, and encouragement for attempting to do manly things, even though the results thus far had not been very good. Now that’s what an assistant should be.

After all the tires were on, I cleaned out the car, and mowed the lawn. Given the amount of stuff covering the driveway, you’d have though that a caravan of nomads had set up a shanty town. After an hour or so, you’d have thought that there was only a couple of gypsies living under my car. Another half hour, and it was spic and span, and I headed in to clean up. After I showered, I torqued the tires to 80 ft/lb as specified in my trusty service manual, and took the car out for a test drive.

Within a block, I pulled over and was retightening the lugs because they were squeaking. Another couple of blocks, and I was retightening again. Something was not right. Screw it. I was going to tighten the goddamned things to 100 foot pounds. They still squeaked and came loose. I tightened them one last time, and we headed for Fort Revere in Hull. The fort is an old artillery battery that has great views of Boston Light and is so well hidden that I’ve driven by it numerous times, never even noticing that it was there. Ahhhhhhh. The view was great, the breeze was nice, there were no tires up there, and you couldn’t see my car.

Once I got home, I looked at my torque wrench and noticed that it said in/lbs instead of ft/lbs. That meant that I was using 1/12 of the torque to hold the tires on than I was supposed to. Instead of 80 ft/lbs I was using 80 in/lbs, which translates to about 7 ft/lbs. ARGHHHHHHH. INCH POUNDS! INCH POUNDS! WHAT THE FUCK ARE INCH PUNDS! WHO IN THE FUCK NEEDS INCH POUNDS! WHAT. GARBA. BIDDA. DIP. DOOP. GAK. In my rage, I torqued the bejesus out of those lugs and drove back to Sears for a wrench that measured in FOOT pounds. For an even exchange, I got my wrench, and torqued on the goddamned wheels in the parking lot.

To the proper spec.

Two days late.

Posted in Cars