Dealer dropped Truck during Tire Rotation

[husky10101]

Because they are directional tires. https://www.discounttire.com/learn/tread-pattern

Thanks

 

[Henry Ford]

This is why I do my own work. I'll be doing all service myself going forward. I can rotate tires and replace the cabin air filter as well as any tech.

How do you rotate tires? It's a pain to even get a jack stand on the lift points.

I have two sets of wheels/tires which I have for other reasons but it makes rotations easy. It's probably the most expensive way of doing it short of buying a two post lift though.

 

[TomB985]

How do you rotate tires? It's a pain to even get a jack stand on the lift points.

I have two sets of wheels/tires which I have for other reasons but it makes rotations easy. It's probably the most expensive way of doing it short of buying a two post lift though.

I jack from the rear until the front comes off the ground. The frame is pretty stiff, unlike trucks from decades past with open C-channel frames.

 

[invertedspear]

This is why I do my own work. I'll be doing all service myself going forward. I can rotate tires and replace the cabin air filter as well as any tech.

Discount tire will do the rotation for free, and they have better lift equipment than I do. I do wish my ICE mechanic would at least do the inspection but they don't want to touch EVs. There are still things that need inspection and maintenance in the suspension systems that I never learned how to do for myself. I guess there's always youTube

 

[Discount Tire]

Discount tire will do the rotation for free, and they have better lift equipment than I do. I do wish my ICE mechanic would at least do the inspection but they don't want to touch EVs. There are still things that need inspection and maintenance in the suspension systems that I never learned how to do for myself. I guess there's always youTube

Thank you for the recognition we greatly appreciate it.

 

[Jseis]

I am so fascinated by these cars. I only found out they existed in the last year or two. Doug Demuro NEEDS to review one!

So we traded ours off at 160 K miles and it was picked up by a collector in NY who got a hold of me a year later and WOW he really is “restoring it!”. 4.6 3-valve V-8 w/slightly under 300 HP and torque. AWD with auto 6 spd. A really fun useful truck that we drove the pants off.

I added driving lights to avoid elk.

 

[2sleep]

To zprime29, even with discount tire you have to be careful. The first rotation they did for me they put the jacks in the wrong place. I ended up making a laminated sheet copied from the owners manual to show them exactly where to put the Jack's and the direction of the tire rotation.

 

[123XYZ]

Had the dealer out today on a mobile service for a 30,000 mile service (aka tire rotation). Tech only used one jack in the middle of the frame between the two specified jacking points and it slipped off while jacking up and the truck fell down. Sounded like a bomb went off when it fell. The wheels were still on. They then proceeded to try to do it again on the other side and it fell again (I did not know anything about it until I asked about the loud sound at the end).

The dealer is picking it up tomorrow to do an inspection in the shop, but what should I keep an eye out for, especially due to the drop twice and the fact that it was jacked up from the middle instead of the designated jacking points Ford calls out for.

The first thing I'd check for is another dealer within 100 miles. Only if I didn't find one would I bother to check to make sure the tech was fired. Doing this once was dumb. Doing it second after dropping the truck was mind-blowingly stupid. That could have been very da gerous for him and, if it happened with wheel off, damaging to the truck. That sort of next-level stupid manifests itself every single day. Either the dealer sent this guy out to do service in your driveway without ever having seen him work in the shop or they already knew he was dangerously stupid. Either way, the dealership itself was being recklessly stupid itself.

As for damage to the truck, as long as the wheels were on, it was jacked on the frame, and the jack didn't poke into anything delicate as the truck tipped off it, it should be fine. This is an F-150, not a a Ferrari or a piece of fine crystal. Jacking points matter on a unibody vehicle, but there are no parts of a ladder frame that are prone to easy denting. It's a very robust vehicle and the impact of being dropped a foot onto its wheels at 0mph of forward motion is pretty insubstantial in comparison to hitting a pothole at speed.

Tire rotation seems like an odd thing for a dealer to do in a driveway. It has to be so much easier using a lift.

 

[123XYZ]

Look in the manual for tire rotation. It tells you to rotate the back tires to the front, and the front tires CROSS to the back. There is no "rotate back to front and front to back". Therefore, you CANNOT do the tire rotation with one jack, unless you use the spare tire also.

F-150s have existed FOREVER. There has never been one jack point for the truck to lift the entire side. This tech needs to be FIRED.

"you CANNOT do the tire rotation with one jack, unless you use the spare tire also."

True, but unless you destroyed one tire and replaced it with something mismatched, you really should be including the spare in your rotation, shouldn't you?

 

[Stang68]

Can anyone recommend a shop in North Jersey to do an inspection? I got the truck back from them and I might be blowing it out of proportion, but they completed the inspection without taking the plastic cover off for the frame that the tech took off to use the jack. Looking under the truck, this clip looks like where the jack hit as the truck fell once it slipped off. Im sure it’s fine, but it is dented in so I would like to get it checked out by someone else just in case.

And to make matters worse, they rotated the tires wrong while the truck was up in the air!

What dealer did you take this to in north Jersey?
The service center at All American Ford in Old Bridge was great when I took my Mach E there. A bit of a drive from north Jersey but it was worth it.

 

[RickLightning]

"you CANNOT do the tire rotation with one jack, unless you use the spare tire also."

True, but unless you destroyed one tire and replaced it with something mismatched, you really should be including the spare in your rotation, shouldn't you?

Not when it doesn't match...

 

[123XYZ]

He didn’t hurt anything by lifting it from the center of the frame, but there could be damage to the body if it slammed into the raised jack.

The suspension and everything else should be fine as long as the wheels were on. You should be fine as long as the raised jack didn’t hit the truck as it came down.

ON edit: I worked at Firestone 20 years ago in high school, and we were thought to rotate back to front. Lots of people calling for the head of a guy who made a mistake. He may have been trained to do that, and we all make mistakes. There’s a human at the other end of all of this.

I agree with everything you said before the edit. With the wheels on, the truck should be completely undamaged if the jack didn't hit anything as it was tipping over, although from another post by the OP it looks like the jack did hit and dent something.

BUT. The tires should be rotated in the way called for by the manufacturer AND there is absolutely NO excuse for doing this a second time after dropping the truck the first time. The man should be thrown in prison for felonious stupidity.

 

[123XYZ]

Not when it doesn't match...

That's exactly why I said "unless you destroyed one tire and replaced it with something mismatched." My comment was also directed to the F-150 Lightning, which comes with a matching spare tire on a matching wheel. As far as I know, all F-150s do.

If you buy a car with a doughnut or no spare, like my Chevy Bolt did and my Tesla does, you obviously can't include a spare in your rotation.

Irrelevant side point: I decided the Bolt needed a spare, but there wasn't room for something the size of one of the Bolt's wheels in the well under the floor of the cargo compartment under the cargo shelf, so I bought a Vredestein Space Master tire and wheel from a Mercedes. Those are stored uninflated and have a substantially smaller diameter before inflation. Because no wheel with the right bolt pattern and centering fit the tire (yes, I could have had something custom drilled), I had to have an adapter plate made. Once I cut out much of the styrofoam that usually fills that compartment, the wheel, tire, adapter plate and high-speed pump fit beautifully in that space like it was made for them. I didn't lose a single cubic inch of storage space. Maybe it the well was for made to hold a similar tire in some market where spare are required.

When I sold that car, I was incredibly disappointed that I'd never gotten a flat in it.

 

[WilliamRobert]

When service departments only offer low wages, they can only get low wage workers.

 

[Mmiketa]

That's exactly why I said "unless you destroyed one tire and replaced it with something mismatched." My comment was also directed to the F-150 Lightning, which comes with a matching spare tire on a matching wheel. As far as I know, all F-150s do.

If you buy a car with a doughnut or no spare, like my Chevy Bolt did and my Tesla does, you obviously can't include a spare in your rotation.

Irrelevant side point: I decided the Bolt needed a spare, but there wasn't room for something the size of one of the Bolt's wheels in the well under the floor of the cargo compartment under the cargo shelf, so I bought a Vredestein Space Master tire and wheel from a Mercedes. Those are stored uninflated and have a substantially smaller diameter before inflation. Because no wheel with the right bolt pattern and centering fit the tire (yes, I could have had something custom drilled), I had to have an adapter plate made. Once I cut out much of the styrofoam that usually fills that compartment, the wheel, tire, adapter plate and high-speed pump fit beautifully in that space like it was made for them. I didn't lose a single cubic inch of storage space. Maybe it the well was for made to hold a similar tire in some market where spare are required.

When I sold that car, I was incredibly disappointed that I'd never gotten a flat in it.

We have a full-sized mismatched spare. It is slightly smaller than the other 4 and has it's own limitations that are spelled out in the manual. Some people have replaced it with a real full sized spare.

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