Locking wheel nuts

[DKZ5745]

I had my font suspension top mounts replaced under warranty a few days ago, they also did a safety check on my car & pointed out that the front tyres were nearly 4 mm compared to the rear at nearly 7mm and the service receptionist said maybe to change them round for the winter, which made sense to me to have the better tread at the front for the bad weather.
So yesterday I tried swapping wheels, front to rear, only to find the locking wheel nut on the front offside completely impossible to remove. The collar that the key engages had pushed in completely flush with the spindle making it impossible to engage.
I took the car back today saying they had somehow broken the nut, but they examined it, and told me it had gone into "anti tamper" mode, and would have to be drilled/chiselled out.

They said I must have done it when trying to swap the wheels. I told them it was like that when I started, but they insisted their mechanics would not have done it. They said 3 of the 4 locking nuts were slightly damaged, although I had only taken the offside back wheel off ready to swap with the front, which I couldn't remove.

I had to pay £ 145 to have the nut removed, and a new set of locking wheel nuts fitted. Then to cap it all, they told me the wheels couldn't be swapped round anyway, because of the sensors on the car being coded to each wheel. They said it might be possible to re-code the sensors, but did I want to risk it as there was plenty of tread on the tyres anyway.

Has anyone else had issues with locking wheel nuts & "anti-tamper" mode?

They said they had a 205 in last week with the same problem after the RAC had been out to a puncture on it.

Seems like another Pug bright idea to me!

 

[Anonymous]

Hmmm...point 2 might be of interest to you here DKZ. Sounds like the receptionist is perpetuating a myth.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/_mobile ... d-10031440

Even Kwik Fit know to recommend agains this practice:

"In the unlikely event that a tyre deflates suddenly, then it is easier to control the vehicle if this occurs at the front of the vehicle. For improved handling and stability it is now recommended that the ‘best’ tyres should always be fitted at the rear of the vehicle. This is irrespective of whether the car is front or rear wheel drive.

Because of this at Kwik Fit we do not recommend tyre rotation and we do recommend fitting your best tyres at the rear of the vehicle. If you are replacing a single tyre then this should be paired with the rear with the tyre having the most tread depth..."

(Taken from their website)

 

[tianorth]

I had this sort of problem where the collar came off at the spline from the stud. Got the dealership to remove all of them and then just put standard wheel bolts in instead.
Got in touch with Peugeot UK HQ and they agreed to reimburse me the £118 the dealership had charged me.

Wouldn't have those wheel bolts fitted again as they have failed once, chances are they are going to fail again.

Can dig out the peugeot reference number if you require it.

http://www.peugeotrczforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8603&hilit=+wheel+bolt#p106792

 

[DKZ5745]

Cheers Chris, I had thought of contacting Peugeot regarding this as I had some success with Renault for similar matters with my previous car.
Having read your post I have emailed them, so hopefully I will have some success there too.
I will let you know if I hear anything. Fingers crossed as my other half is not best pleased forking out nearly £150 just before Christmas for something you can't even see!
Possibly not a good time to bring up quads :eusa-think:

 

[DKZ5745]

Good point Riz.

Amazing how they advised to change them round until it became difficult coz of the sensors, then suddenly there was "plenty of tread left on the fronts anyway".
I must admit, I had thought the same about the fronts needing to be the best tyre on a Fwd car.
I think they will be fine where they are for another few months, at nearly 4mm I don't think I need panic just yet.

Plus, like my Father-in-law said (he used to be the warranty manager for a Vauxhall dealership) this way I will only need to replace 2 tyres at a time, if I had swapped them, all 4 would have needed replacing @ the same time.

Hopefully I will have good news from Peugeot & all will work out well :eusa-think:

 

[DKZ5745]

Hey Chris, I might need that reference number, the dealership are saying 3 out of the 4 wheel nuts were damaged and it must have been me that did it, cos they didn't! So Peugeot UK are saying its no warranty claim & they aren't interested, even though, to my knowledge, this is probably only the 1st or second time the wheels were removed. I have written to them again, but might need a bit of back up , just in case, although to be honest, I'm not holding out a lot of hope here, they seem quite certain about their decision

 

[tianorth]

Peugeot reference number 15597137

Reported on 06/06/2014.

The guy who helped was quite helpful actually, see if you can get the same person to handle your case, then they can't say "we have never heard about this before".

 

[DKZ5745]

Cheers Chris, that's great. I will get back to them & see what excuse they have this time :eusa-think:

 

[RCZ-Performance]

Rotating the wheels around will not have any impact on the sensors as they are not location specific. The sensors are monitoring tyre pressures only, so wherever they are located on the car has no bearing whatsoever to their functionality. When you change tyres, the sensors might indicate at first a problem when you first start the car, but that eventually goes away after the system basically adjusts itself.

On our RCZ we have moved wheels around, changed tyres, changed wheels, and also replaced the valve stem on the sensors when changing tyres (which we recommend to anyone and we sell these stems too - original Peugeot part), and not once have we had a problem with the sensors. Yes we have had them indicate low pressure after a tyre change, but again that goes away eventually (if you know you have no problem then the sensor will eventually learn that too).

 

[DKZ5745]

Hmmm it's a shame that Peugeot engineers don't know as much about Peugeots as you do. They told me the sensors were coded to the wheels, and that changing them round would cause all kind of problems.
They did say that the system could be re-coded but "did I want to have that hassle on top of the locking bolt problem?" I took that to mean that there would be an additional charge if I wanted them to do that. I thought that having to pay £145 for what started as a free warranty repair was more than enough, especially just before Christmas.
I am still in contact with Peugeot trying to recover my costs for replacing the locking bolts on a 12 month old car that has probabably only had the wheels removed once.
Anyway enough said before I go off on a rant.

Thanks for your input. I will of course post any results I get

 

[DKZ5745]

So I've had another reply from Peugeot customer services.

Despite me telling them that I haven't had the wheels off, and the fact that the dealership had both front wheels off & obviously back on again with presumably no problem - so the locking bolts can't have been damaged when I took the car into them, this is the latest reponse :-

"I've had a look at the other case but the details appear to be quite different for that customer as his dealership had sent his vehicle to a 3rd party garage who over-tightened the wheel bolts with an air gun which caused damage to the bolts themselves.

I understand that any damage caused on your vehicle did not occur whilst your vehicle was with the dealership so I'm afraid we're unable to consider the costs incurred, but thank you for contacting Peugeot. "

I really don't know what more to say on this, as clearly the only person that can't have done the damage is me, yet I had to pay for the repair.

Good old Peugeot customer service strikes again it seems.

When I had the Renault Megane CC, despite the fact it went into a third party garage, despite the fact that Renault never saw the allegedly damaged brake discs, after I contacted them simply to ask about the longevity of the parts, Renault still offered to pay half the cost of replacement as the car had only done 24k and Renault said the discs should be good for at least 50k. It seems their French rivals Pug don't operate their customer relations in quite the same manner.

£145 to Peugeot isn't even a spit in a bucket, yet when the owner of one of their "flagship" cars contacts them at length - therefore clearly quite upset about the unplanned repair costs, and equally as clearly not responsible for the problem, Peugeot are not interested in the slightest in making any kind of gesture towards the repair costs.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I have just gone over my 10 minute daily rant allowance, so I think I'll just have to get over it

 

[tianorth]

Ring up Peugeot UK HQ and speak to the person. If you don't get anywhere just ask them to speak to their manager or supervisor. Keep pursuing it.

As for mine the other garage said they don't use air gun on wheel bolts as they have had problems previously (quite a few years ago), but even though Peugeot had deemed that another garage had damaged the wheel bolt they still reimbursed me in full!

Come on Peugeot get some better locking wheel bolts that are not going to break with the first 100 time of being remove. Even this figure is very low.

My wheels had only been on and off the car 4 times!

 

[pete.garratt]

Rotating the wheels around will not have any impact on the sensors as they are not location specific. The sensors are monitoring tyre pressures only, so wherever they are located on the car has no bearing whatsoever to their functionality. When you change tyres, the sensors might indicate at first a problem when you first start the car, but that eventually goes away after the system basically adjusts itself.

On our RCZ we have moved wheels around, changed tyres, changed wheels, and also replaced the valve stem on the sensors when changing tyres (which we recommend to anyone and we sell these stems too - original Peugeot part), and not once have we had a problem with the sensors. Yes we have had them indicate low pressure after a tyre change, but again that goes away eventually (if you know you have no problem then the sensor will eventually learn that too).

Further to this, it IS true that earlier Zs have a system where the TPMS sensors are coded to the vehicle. However, as RCZ Performance said, they are not coded to locations. Therefore, you can move wheels around the vehicle. The system has, in fact, the possibility to code 9 sensors: 4 Summer wheels; 4 Winter wheels & 1 spare. If you put a new sensor on, then the system needs programming to recognising it.

NOTE: this is different to just moving them around to different places.

I know this because, when I fitted winter wheels to my car I had to re-programme it to recognise the 4 new sensors. I only needed to do this once. I swapped wheels back and forth over 3 winters on my previous GT 200 & didn't have issues.

Newer RCZs (phase 2/facelift possibly) seem to have a different system.

How do I know this?

Because I have just fitted new winter wheels to my R, with brand new sensors. I fully expected to have to re-programme the system. However, when I connected the software tools to the car, there wasn't a TPMS ECU to programme. After driving in excess of 100 miles and the monitoring system not reporting errors and all 4 wheels with good pressure, I can only conclude that they no longer need to be coded to the vehicle - the system just knows it's getting a good signal from a working sensor. This looks like a simplification to me, a useability improvement if you like, removing the need to do all the reprogramming mucking about.

As I say, this appears to be a difference between phase 1 & phase 2 vehicles. I don't think the fact I have an R will affect this area of vehicle operation.

 

[DKZ5745]

It's a shame the people who are selling these things to the public don't actually know what they are talking about.
It would be bad enough if they simply weren't aware of some tech spec but to actually tell owners something which simply is wrong is unforgivable.

I intend to continue to pursue this with Peugeot UK, but unfortunately my Father had a stroke on Friday, so my attention has been diverted to more important issues at the moment.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread. Once I get my head back together I will try to post whatever the outcome of my contact with PUG is.

 

[Anonymous]

hi sorry to hear of your problem as it happened exactly to me, 3 wheel nuts damaged and unable to get them off when i went to my local garage for new tyres, contacted peugeot uk and explained i have never had wheesl off,they said they would contact me within 5 days as it goes to a claim panel for assessment, anyway on the 5th day they did contact me and agreed to cover cost of removal and had arranged with my local dealer to contact me to arrange appointment, i took a new set of locking nuts ,[not peugeot] and all is well, sorry but i do not have a claim ref.

 

[DKZ5745]

Cheers for that Softail, I will be sure to bear that in mind when I contact Pug :thumbup: