Holy crap! I had to jump on my breaker bar to get my lugs off. All 240lbs of me!

 

Why bother with a torque wrench when they have those cool air-driven lug tighteners?

 

I think it's normal of all Mini places. When I did the brake pads this past month, I had to use a longer braker bar with my and my wife's weight on it just to get 6 of the lugs off. My impact wrench wouldn't even budge them.

 

I broke 3 sockets getting my Daughter's wheels off a few weeks ago.

 

Same thing happened to me. MINI put front brakes on the Clubman; I had to stand on a 16" breaker bar with a hardened impact type socket and jump up and down! I think a regular socket would have busted. I called them and complained, for what it's worth.

 

its because everyones 24 out of a tech school not knowing what the eff they are doing?!?!?!?!

 

Seriously, why do they do this? Are they trained to?

The only think I can think of is that when the wheels are torqued to 104 they will back out a little after a few miles and need to be torqued again. I did this on Saturday. Maybe they just want to play it safe?

 

It's usually the in-experienced kids they let put wheels on and off a vehicle. Plus being much faster to ise the air impact wrench to zip them on. It is very frustrating to have a problem on the road and you can't even unfasten the lug nuts! Yes, the dealer should have them better trained and enforce the torque specs.

Of course, I can remember being young and tightened ALL bolts as hard as I could. After breaking a few bolts I realized that was not the way to do it. Heh, heh...