Yeah. I ordered some Cragar 15x7 for my 92 RS, and I got them a couple days ago. I took my car to Belle tire to get them installed, and they took the old wheels off, installed the tires on the new ones, and after about 2 hours, they came over to me in the waiting room and asked me if I had any lug nuts. I thought you could use the regular acorn lugs. I was sadly mistaken. They use special order SST 12mmx1.5 lugs. I was pissed. I was about to fill out the jegs order form again when my dad reccomended me to a tire place his friend owned. I called him, and he said he had them! I took my car over there today, and he said it'd take about 45 minutes to get my car into the shop (after they finish the others), and about 30 minutes to install. I thought "Ok, well, its 2 pm, and I have to work at 5. Plenty of time." Thats when the sh-t hit the fan. At about 4pm, they got my car in the garage. After about 2 more hours, they got all the wheels on. They were installing the wheels on the car when they came out to me. 4 hours of impatient sitting made me kinda cranky, and the last thing I wanted to hear was them saying "We have a problem". It appears my ball joints in the front of my car are completely jacked up, the tie rod ends need to be replaced, and two shafts that the lugs screw onto (I forgot what they were called) were gone. They had one replacement shaft, and they needed to order one, and at the time, Deckers (a local auto store) was closed. The wheels where I were missing them, were the front passenger and rear driver. they said they could fix it all in one day, and it'd be $180 for parts and labor. I'm surprised my wheel hasn't fallen off yet. On the good side, the Cragars look great!

 

The shaft your revering to is called the lug stud or wheel stud. Seems kinda odd that the two studs just fell out. Usually they are a pain in the *** to get out so i dont know how they could fall out with the wheel on the car.

 

Yeah. I JUST got my rear axle replaced, and it was used, so I'm assuming it was gone when I got it installed, but the front one wasnt missing, it was bent or something. I think belle tire had something to do with it......

 

Maybe it came out with your old lugnut?

 

The last time I had tires put on my Impala, they broke a stud clean off...They did admit to doing it, and replaced it with a kind sorry for the inconvenience.

Most shops obviously don't use torque wrenches! In fact I don't think I ever seen a torque wrench used on lugs at any tire shop.
They just set there impact guns to high, and you get warped rotors or broken studs down the road.
Anymore I just get my tires mounted and balanced, I do the rest!

BTW: Stock studs are dime a dozzen, so I can't imagine a shop not admitting to it.
Also don't the studs used on 3rd gens have a head, meaning they can only be installed and removed from the back? So someone probably broke it with an impact gun.

Ron

 

Studs are a dime a dozen but its the labor that kills the repair.

 

got any pics of the cragars?

 

These are the Cragars, but this pic doesn't serve them justice! When I get my car back from the shop, Ill post up some before/after pics

 

I don't know about other shops, when I worked for discount tire co. we had to use torque wrenches on every car/truck that came into the shop when installing. The factory truck would also come around every couple weeks and check/adjust all the shop torque wrenches. Some customers automatically assumed it was our fault when wheel studs broke off when 99% of the time it was the last person that worked on their car, I'll try and explain...

Wheel studs would usually only break on cars when people over torqued the lugnuts prior to us ever working on them, factory torque spec is 100 ft. lbs. which is (way) under what most people do at their own backyard/garage. An air impact gun is usually 450ft. lbs. !! I cringe when I see guys hammering the Shizzle* out of 'em when putting wheels back on.

Then there's the cars that haven't had the wheels off in a couple years, just long enough for the lug nuts to rust and bond to the studs. When you try and take them off the studs break, Haven't they heard of wheel bearing service? brake inspection? tire rotations? no.. they think oil changes and topping off the windshield washer fluid is going to keep moisture from collecting inside the wheel studs? If your car is going to sit or you don't like the thought of tire rotations, re packing wheel bearings or anything else that would require taking the wheels off for a period of a year or more- do yourself a favor and put a small dab of anit-seize on the wheel studs. That will prevent the permanent bonding I was talking about.

If you are racing or have wider wheels/tires/or using wheel spacers you might want to go as high as 115-120 ft. lbs. on the lugnuts when torqueing, anything more is putting too much stress on the wheel studs/lugnuts and inviting disaster (wheel studs could just snap off).

 

hey sounds to me like you need to get a second opinion on the frontend of your car sounds like that shop was out to make a couple bucks i had a shop do a brake job for me one time because i was workin 6 days a week and didnt have time to get to it and they came back with a list of about 300 dollars worth of stuff that "needed to be fixed" i took it to another shop and they said i only needed a outer tierod and an alignment so id get a second opinion on your ride