ShopNGarage

I’d rather go to the dentist than take my truck to a professional mechanic. You may be wondering, with such a well equipped home shop, why I’d be visiting a mechanic. The answer is that the truck in question is my work truck, a government vehicle.

There are some very good mechanics out there, but most are under the gun to produce. Most are working against a flat rate time guide. The labor time for which you are billed is looked up in a book. The book is filled with estimates of how much time various jobs should normally take to perform. If the job is completed in less time then is listed in the book, you are still billed for the book time. At the end of the day, if the mechanic worked 8 hours, but produced 10 hours of book time, he is paid for 10 hours. On the other hand, if the job takes longer then the book time, the mechanic loses. If he only produces 6 hours of book time in an 8 hour day, he is only paid for 6 hours. Even in shops where the mechanics are paid by an hourly rate, management still closely watches productivity. If the mechanic is only averaging 6 hours of billable labor in an 8 hour day, he may be shown the door. As a result, a large percentage of mechanics take every shortcut possible to produce as many billable hours as they can.

Let’s look at lug nuts as an example.

I spend a lot of time on bad roads or off road with my job. I get quite a few flats every year. Whenever I go to a shop or a tire store, I always stress that they do not over torque my lug nuts. The mechanics don’t care and hammer the lugs on with an air impact gun. Some shops will check them afterward with a torque wrench. This ensures they are tight enough, but doesn’t check if they are over tightened. Every time I get a flat, I end up taking the handle off my Hi-Lift jack to use as a cheater on the end of my lug wrench. In this picture, you may notice a lug nut is missing. It was over tightened to the point that the threads were damaged and it could not be reused.

When I worked as a mechanic, I used torque sticks. These sticks are designed to flex under blows from an impact gun when their designed torque is reached. This flexing prevents the lug nut from getting tighter. While not as accurate as a torque wrench, I believe they are accurate enough for lug nuts when used with a quality impact gun. A weak gun may not hit the torque stick hard enough for it to reach the designed torque and begin flexing to absorb the blows. This picture shows a pair of torque sticks from my toolbox. They are both 19 mm. One is 80 ft/lbs, while the other is 100 ft/lbs. They are Blue Point brand and made in the USA.