Should wheel bolts be fully tightened by air or by hand?

[rouge59]

I recently had an issue where the garage swapped my winter & summer wheels over & shortly after the car failed it's MOT as the rears had been put on the wrong side, which was satisfactorily resolved when the garage swapped them over & put it through the test again.

Fast forward 6 weeks and my car needs new front pads and discs which I planned to fit myself, but when I tried to loosen the wheel nuts they were incredibly tight, and the only way they'd move by jumping all my 15 stone on the tyre lever, and even then they only budged with some difficulty.

I then tried to loosen the locking wheel nut, & had to use so much force that it's irreparably cracked, so I rang the garage to see if he can somehow get the locking nuts off and replace the bolts, which he's going to try to do tomorrow.

So my thinking is that as one of his staff have tightened the nuts to a ridiculous degree, he should foot the bill for replacements and labour.

The forums views please.

[rouge59]

I should also say the garage is a Porsche independent who store & swap over a lot of winter tyres on a lot of very nice customers cars, so I would have thought they'd know what they were doing and not over tighten wheel nuts.

The other issue is that if my missus had a puncture in the middle of nowhere, there's absolutely no chance she could have got those bolts off, so from a practical point of view it's poor too.