Of all the fasteners on a car, some of the most important are the lug nuts. You don’t want a wheel coming off.

I had to do a double take when I took the hubcap off one of the wheels of a car. Only two of the lug nuts were actually anywhere near tightened. The other three were just barely put on. Whoever last worked on the car somehow forgot. They’re very lucky the wheel didn’t come loose.

To try to prevent that happening on cars I work on, on almost every car I take a wheel off of I hand-torque the lug nuts with a torque wrench. If I’d somehow missed a lug or five with my impact wrench I would find out. On some cars, mostly ones with steel wheels and hubcaps I just go over all the lugs multiple times with my impact wrench and torque stick to be certain that I hit every single one. I see lots of techs just use their impact wrench, some even without torque sticks, and they never have problems, but I’d rather be safe with the cars I work on.

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-Dan