So a few weeks ago, I had ew tires mounted to my summer wheels. A set of VMR CSL reps. All went well, I gave the job to my usual shop, and they mounted and balanced the tires without issue. Zero scratches.
Fast forward to a few days ago, and I decide to repaint my brake calipers back to silver to hide all of the rust from winter. I come to find out that my wheel locks look a bit worn, and to make matters worse, they're torqued to well beyond 87 ft/lbs. (I think they're torqued to somewhere around 200+ ft/lbs, my buddy's air tools were no use so they must be good and tight) It took my brother and I about twenty minutes to remove just one. He had to apply pressure into the wheel to keep the key in contact with the bolt while I tried to remove it with a 3ft breaker bar and iron cheater bar. Not fun, so I decide to give my shop a call and drop the car off to them the next morning so they can just remove them for me with the air gun. Bad idea
While trying to get the remaining 3 wheel locks off, my shop ruined my key, and probably stripped all of the lock bolts. And to make matters worse, they nicked one of my CSL's with a deadblow hammer trying to squeeze a socket over it.
It doesn't look that bad in the picture, but its a deep gouge, not a scratch that I could simply touch up. Needless to say I'm pissed. So after screaming at this guy who I watched hit my wheel with his hammer; I took the car to a local BMW dealer on my shop's dime to have them remove the remaining wheel locks.
A short talk with the SA later, and my car was in the hands of some BMW techs. They quickly found the right key and had at it. 20min later, my SA walks up to me, and shows me the remains of their dealership key, that is now in 3 pieces in his hand. These bolts are so tight, that even a brand new key couldn't budge them. So I convinced them to order me just a key through the dealer, because apparently you can't just walk off the street and order one. There's no P/N and you have to be a dealer to get it. But my SA was nice, and offered to sell me a spare seeing as how he now had to order a replacement for the dealership.
What the hell do I do now?
At this point, I'm basically leaving it up to my local shop. They want to try again with a new key before resorting to more aggresive methods. Which is fine, until it turns out that it doesn't work. The shop already reimbursed me for the new key, and honestly they have been very professional about this whole fiasco. So I am thankful for that. But what are my options here?
Here is what they did to my old key:
And this is the one lock bolt I was able to remove. The other 3 are in waaay worse shape:
I used to work at my buddy's sheet metal shop, so I took the car over there to get some ideas. They reccomended as a last ditch effort to use an EZ out bolt remover, but seeing as the bolts are hardened, and deeply recessed on the rear wheels, it could get hairy. I'm to the point where I'm basically washing my hands of this. It's the shop's fault, so it is now up to them to remedy it as far as I am concerned.
What say you mafia?
Sorry for the long post, work is slow, and I'm venting a bit...
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Originally Posted by trancenation
