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raroberts's avatar
raroberts
Explorer
Mar 20, 2014

Lug nuts seized, they have caps!!

a little over two years ago I replaced my steel, rusting, trailer wheels with new aluminum wheels. The lug nuts were rusting too, so I bought the good ones (I thought) that were stainless steel. I had a blowout while on a trip and when I tried to take the nuts off one of them was very tight. I put a pipe over my breaker bar to make a long lever and the nut stripped (I thought). After many tries I finally pounded a smaller socket on the nut with a hammer and got the nut off. Upon inspecting the nut I was surprised to realized the nuts had a cap over the nut and it was the cap that was sliding over the nut. I looked at the rest of the nuts and the caps were all loose. I am posting this for you information,,take a look at your lug nuts the next time you take yours off. You do not want to be put in the same situation I was. I think I was very lucky to be able to get that nut off. Get solid nuts.

I do have a question. Does anyone know of a website that has good prices on good nuts? I need 48 of them.

27 Replies

  • Make sure you use a 6 point socket. Mine has them and I used a 12 point a few times then I had to go to a 6 most of them survived with a little help from the hammer.
  • I had that happen on a friend's car, and he didn't know they were caps. We had one heck of a time getting them off. Just makes you want to go back to the shop and use that impact gun on some other nuts.
  • I used to work in a Goodyear tire shop. Those cheap things would drive us nuts. We found the best way to get them off was to pound a heave duty socket onto them, and rip 'em apart with an impact wrench. Of course, we'd have to get the customer's permission first because they'd have to pay for new lug nuts. When we showed them why, they were usually happy to replace them with solid nuts in case they encountered a flat tire in their journeys.
  • They'll go to the ends of the earth to make something cheaply wont they.
    Thanks for the heads up.