I have a 2012 f150. Owners manual says torque to 150 ft. lbs.
That seems awful much. Plus, the shoulder of the lug nuts starts to seize to the aluminum wheel by then giving incorrect torque values anyway. Anyone know how much is safe but not too much. I’m sure it has to be stretching the threads at 150. There’s no way in hell you can get them loose on the road without a 18” breakover bar.

I just use my impact and stop when I feel like it's enough.

I have two sizes of 4 way wrenches. One the regular one a couple grunts and its tight.
With the larger 4 way one grunt is plenty.

Wait a minute, you read the manual?

What is this manual of which you speak?

on my 14 it's whatever the tire shop torqued it to.

with a 4 way I just go till it won't.

put some loctite blue on the studs if you are worried about them.

he is the mexican dude that just took your rims and tires.

proper torque specs is " 1/2 turn before it breaks!"

I like this. "After installing your new tire, tighten the lug nuts to a pressure of two grunts".

I'm having this printed on a label and sticking it by my spare tire on the boat trailer!

Truthfully I stole that from Pat when he was talking about props.

They increased it to 150' lbs. when they went to 14mm wheel studs.

Thanks guys. Excellent advice as usual.

Over the years, I have used most of the methods you guys have mentioned and never even considered looking at the owners manual.
The main reason I'm inquiring now is that I've been told that non-uniform tightening can cause warped brake rotors.
I don't know if that's true but have warped my share of rotors over the years and figure anything I can do to help prevent that can't hurt.

I'm still going to use the torque wrench when doing tire rotations or brake jobs - can't hurt. But, I'm going to back off that 150 ft lb nonsense to something that at least does not seize and gall the the wheel to the lugnut shoulder because I think that's too much. And, there's no way the torque wrench is accurate at that point. I'll figure out what seems good and tight like I always have and then make them all the same.

tighten it until it squeaks

I always do three ugga dugga’s.

My truck is 140. I thought that was high and torqued them to 120. I pulled the front tires the other day to put on new shocks. This time I mounted them by feel with the impact the way we did it when I worked at a tire shop years ago, as in 40 years ago lol. I checked torque and all but one clicked at 140.