It is said that no lubricant at all should be used on lug bolts. One thing that can happen is if the alloys were fitted in the Winter say at -20c, then in the Summer at say +30c they will be much tighter to remove.

I have always got by, by stamping on the wheel brace... maybe the garage used the wrong torque setting.

 

Manual says "Never apply oil or grease to wheel bolts"

p. 345. I thought I really should look there. Sorry for being a lazy guy (initially).

 

I've never had problems with the bolts like that, but I have had rims welded to the hubs that took some unbelievable force to remove. I now use grease on the mating surfaces for the rim to prevent that.

 

Use the copper never seize - looks like creamed pennies. I used it on every car.

 

^ +1 (for the rims - not the lug bolts). The Porterfield brakes I ordered from Jerry at formymercedes.com came with a selection of greases for various parts (pads to caliper, rotor to hub, wheel rim to hub/rotor. The rim grease was the copper type.

 

Sure the grease for the wheel to hub face is a must, once the voltaic action has started the wheels can be very hard to remove.

 

As part of our 10 point car release program at Costco tire we must clean off all grease and anti-seize from lugs and all mounting surfaces.then the wheels are mounted with impact wrench, then final torqued to spec by a superviser.

 

That's to protect you from lawyers. If I don't put never seize on the mounting surface of my wife's XC90 I have to kick the wheels off. But I also use a dab on every lug nut. My daughter's A4 spent its whole life in Colorado where there is basically no corrosion and the lugs were hard to get out even after they were loose. No way she could change a flat. No way a lumberjack could change her flat. I've not had any problems with them coming loose or getting over torqued. Lot's of people do it.

 

You are right. It is all about the law suits. We get a lot of cars from Canada. Talk about corrosion! It takes a good 20 mins to get all the anti seize off. We also scrub all the rust and corrosion off the surfaces. We are taught in training that you cannot get proper torque with all that crud on the surfaces. Me personally, I have never used anti seize or a torque wrench on any of my vehicles. But after training I did buy myself a good torque wrench.

 

I have always appreciated the fact that Costco uses a calibrated torque wrench to tighten lugs. This is as opposed to places like NTB that will just crank away with a pneumatic impact wrench, breaking many lugs.

Costco may do what they do for their own legal protection, but their customer service is beyond excellent. They scratched two of my rims on the CLK when mounting new tires and were quick to make it right, paying for the repair (which made them look better than when they went in). Then, after a blowout a few weeks back, hey replaced BOTH front tires for the price of one's road hazard deductible. They are the first (and thus usually the last) place I go for tires on all my cars.

 

Whenever I have brought my car home from a tire shop, the first thing I do is to loosen all the lug nuts and re-tighten them to the correct torque.

It's amazing how often those gorillas in the shop put torques on the nuts that would be impossible to deal with at the roadside.

 

I can honestly say that I have only ever tightened them by hand, never used a torque wrench on them, been doing it since 1952 on the 475 cars that I have owned.

 

475 cars! Oh my.

 

I always use a torque wrench. I tend to over-tighten things when I don't.