Dealer stripped threads in Hub who has to pay?

Hi, hoping someone can help me here, my wife bought a brand new Copen back in 2008, it has only ever been serviced at the Diahatsu dealer we bought the car from, took it in for a service and two new front tyres last Thursday and got a call saying the front nearside hub has stripped a tread for the wheel bolt and it is a £305 repair to replace the nut! They said it was from corrosion and then told me the bolts appear to have stretched? Also stated that all the wheel bolts show this problem and that all the hubs will need a repair as the threads might strip and we can potentially have a wheel fall off whilst driving.

I have never ever heard of this problem with any car ever! There is no corrosion and I think that the wheel bolts have been over-torqued by the dealer. No one has ever had the wheels off except this very same dealer. I think they stripped the wheel bolt and hub thread and are trying to get me to pay for their mistake.

Is there anyone on here who has ever heard of this problem with the Copen? Our Copen is the 1.3 litre model and built in 2008, has 41000 miles on it and has never had a problem before. Our car is in immaculate condition, no rust or corrosion, has not been abused and has had full service history from new with the very same dealer we bought it from. This is the third set of front tyres fitted to the Copen, so it has not had the wheels removed an excessive amount of times.

It is also out of Diahatsu 5 year warranty by 11 months! So they want us to pay for the repair to the stripped thread in the NSF hub. Otherwise we will only have three wheel bolts holding the front wheel on! That is not safe.

Any advice would be really appreciated from other owners of these lovely Copen's! Many thanks in advance.

Best regards, Paul, Camberley, Surrey, UK.

 

Thank you Adam.

Hello Adam, many thanks for the fast reply.
I spotted my spelling mistake, I meant thread not tread!

I thought it was a bolt that held the wheels to the hub, not just a nut! I have never had a wheel off the Copen so I would not know that, so that is even more interesting to me as I can get a friend to cut a new thread to the stud and make me a specific nut to fit the wheel hub!

Are you sure the wheels are held on with nuts to a threaded stud, our lovely Copen is the 1.3 litre model and it looks like wheel bolts to me when I look at the car before. If our car has these nuts fitted I will collect the car without the repair and get it sorted myself!

The £305 cost is to repair the stripped stud only! They state they need to remove the hub and replace the wheel bearing and most of the cost is labour. They state also that all the other studs show the same problem.

They called me on Friday at 3.30pm and said the bill for the minor service and two new tyres plus the repair cost to the hub will total £640.00 I was expecting to pay about £250 to £280 for the service and 2 tyres not £640.00
The garage is only down the road from me so I will visit them Monday morning first thing and get the car back ASAP before they start messing it up.

This is the last time I ever take the Copen to be serviced by a dealer, there is no point now it is almost 6 years old, I always service my own cars and my last car did 170000 trouble free miles with me doing all the servicing for its life. I just thought the Copen is so special and such a lovely car that it deserved a dealer to service it!

Best regards, Paul.

 

Looked at the Copen today and took pictures.

Hello all, many thanks for all of the reply's so far.

Today I popped down to garage and found our Copen parked out the back, so I removed each wheel nut and took pictures of each stud and nut, there were only 7 studs left in place as they have removed the stripped stud off of the off side front hub.

I was told it failed due to corrosion, well, not a hint of corrosion on any of the remaining 7 studs and 7 wheel nuts. What a load of bull they have told me.

Also I can see they have stripped the thread off another stud, it is missing the first two rounds of thread and the swarf of the stripped thread is still present on the end of the stud trapped in grease!

I am just about to load the images from my camera to my computer and then I will add them to this thread so you can all see for yourselves.

I will be at the garage tomorrow morning at 8.30am to have a word with them!

Many thanks for all of your help and advice so far. Best regards, Paul.

 

Pictures of the hub studs and wheel nuts.

Hello all, I have uploaded a few pictures of the wheel hub studs and the wheel nuts. Not exactly corroded are they! The threads on the studs are rust free as are the threads in the wheel nuts.
I also added the photo of the stud with stripped threads at the start of the stud, the pen is pointing to the removed thread material still caught in the grease on the stud. It is not corrosion that has removed the thread from the stud, it is the garage crossing the nut thread to stud thread and firing the air gun off that has stripped the thread off of this stud.
They have removed the other damaged stud, so I have not seen that yet, but I have seen enough to know it is not caused through corrosion as they told me!

Best regards, Paul.

 

The missing stud.

Here is a picture which shows they have removed the most damaged stud from the hub.

Regards, Paul.

 

Hello Adam, thanks for your help and to all the others on here who have contributed to my problem. I will post what they say tomorrow, I hope the garage see's some sense in this.
Best regards, Paul.

 

Great news!

Hello to everyone, well I popped down to the garage this morning (I got there at 7.30am and they opened at 8.30am, I was very keen!).
The gentleman in charge was off unwell Friday, so had not told the service desk guy it was a no charge repairs for the customer.

He stated that the car is taken by them to a local tyre fitter company who fits the specific Copen tyre and brought back to the garage by their mechanic. When the Copen was taken Thursday, as they removed the nuts to the NSF wheel, the tyre fitter felt the nuts tighten up as they came off, so called the Diahatsu garage mechanic over and asked if he wanted them to continue as there was serious issues getting the nuts off. It was agreed to remove the wheel as the new tyre needed to be fitted anyway, so it had to come off sooner of later. This exposed the damaged studs for the first time.

It became apparent to the garage that the previous time tyres were fitted, that the nuts had been cross-thread to the studs and over torqued by the tyre fitter that particular time causing this damage.

The garage told me that as they subcontracted the tyre fitting out, they are 100% liable for all the damage so they will carry out all repairs to our Copen at no cost to us.

So it has all worked out fine and my confidence has been restored in the garage we use for our Copen!

What this has taught me is that we should all be very vigilant when we take our cars to the tyre centre as it will not be immediately visible if they damage the studs/bolts when re-fitting the wheel. Only when you need to change a tyre again will the damage be seen/found. That could be a year or so after the last tyre change was made. Could you imagine trying to prove who did the damage!

Many thanks to everyone's input into this, we were getting so upset over this and now has all worked out fine and we are looking forward to getting our Copen back and enjoying it again!

Best regards, Paul.

 

Hello DaG, yes you are spot on, first thing I did was talk to this guy who called me and asked him where the hell corrosion came into the equation. I told him that the studs and nuts had been inspected and photographed individually by a certified mechanical engineer on Sunday and that there was two of us there on Sunday to appraise the Copen. The chap went very quiet and bright red and disappeared from the front desk for a few minutes and then told me the boss will be dealing with the situation.

I already knew the person on the end of the phone did not really know what he was talking about on Thursday and Friday as I could hear the panic in his voice when I started asking technical questions about the problem.

I think this was a genuine miss-understanding between the guy who spoke to me and the mechanics who were dealing with the hub stud issue and liaising back to the boss who was off Friday as he was unwell. So the guy on the desk had no idea that the garage were paying for the repairs, but could see the cost of the parts required and labour cost to effect the repairs and stated that to me assuming I would be paying the bill.

They handed me the stud and nut that they removed this morning, I have no idea why they have cut it off the hub, but I guess it was done to closely examine it. I will upload a picture of the stud and nut, even I was shocked at how badly it was damaged. They only thing that held the nut in place was all the entwined metal between the two parts!

This garage have always been 100% straight with me and my wife so I was really worried when I was talking to the guy on the phone Thursday and Friday, I think it came down purely to him not understanding the issue completely and not be kept in the loop. All he could see was more and more parts to be ordered to rectify the problem as they investigated each hub and examined the studs.

Best regards, Paul.