A struggle getting the winter tyres off

[900000]

Johann should invest in a torque wrench. It is now number one on the Christmas list.

I tried to swap my winters for summers over the weekend. I could get all the locking nuts off except the two front ones. So drove to my friends' place as they have a powerful drill thing that can do the trick. Neither nut would budge. Grrr. By this time the locking nut had fallen off so many times and under so much pressure that both the locking nut and the nuts had been damaged...

So today I took the car to a tyre place - Kwik-fit, Balham. At first the young man tried a long wrench. Nothing. Then he tried the compressed air machine. Nothing. I told him they are now ruined and I don't mind if he ruins them in getting them off. Then he comes over with a little red cordless drill. Hmmm I thought. Wham and both locking nuts where off. I asked him what on earth that drill was and he said it cost him £600 and was about FIVE times stronger than the compressed air one! Yikes. Why he didn't try it first, I don't know. So off to a parts shop next door for a new set of locking nuts and £38 lighter I now have a new set.

Did they change the winters to summers over for me? Nope they wanted £40 for that! So I laughed, drove back to my mates' place and we swapped them there.

So why the torque wrench for Christmas? I over-tightened the bolts to begin with. WAY, WAY over-tightened them. Thankfully this whole saga happened at home and I had days to sort it and not on a wet rainy road on the way to Wales (as I will be this coming weekend).

[domhnall]

funnily enough we trashed the locking wheel nut doing this on my dad's fabia at the weekend. Local Skoda dealer got them off using his master set.

Lots of copper grease applied to the summer wheels going back on.

[pimpdriver]

Be careful of too much copper grease.

It might migrate onto wheel nuts and let them go loose.....

[Zib]

The 120 Nm of torque usually required by VAG cars can be exceeded just by jumping on the wrench supplied along with the spare wheel. A proper torque wrench is the way to go, and you should get a calibration certificate with it.

[900000]

The 120 Nm of torque usually required by VAG cars can be exceeded just by jumping on the wrench supplied along with the spare wheel. A proper torque wrench is the way to go, and you should get a calibration certificate with it.

I might have done just this when I put the winters on... :wonder: I won't again, nor did I now putting the summers back. Lesson learnt.

[Yetigreenline2]

The 120 Nm of torque usually required by VAG cars can be exceeded just by jumping on the wrench supplied along with the spare wheel. A proper torque wrench is the way to go, and you should get a calibration certificate with it.

And then get it recalibrated every 12 months as my work torque wrenches go out of true ver quickly when we are working on engines alot.

[Bobdog]

Be careful of too much copper grease.

It might migrate onto wheel nuts and let them go loose.....

Yes, nothing worse than too much grease on your loose nuts.

[ejstubbs]

Lots of copper grease applied to the summer wheels going back on.

The general advice from those "in the know" seems to be that wheel bolt threads should not be lubricated. Googling will throw up lots of examples eg this one on Honest John's forum. The technical argument is that lubing the threads means that the clamping force from the bolts for a given torque is higher than designed - possibly by as much as a factor of two. There is a similar technical argument against putting copaslip on the mating faces: they are the primary interface for transferring forces between the hub and the wheel, and they work by friction, so lubing them means that they won't be working quite the way they're designed to.

None of which, I admit, is any comfort when you're struggling to get a wheel off at the roadside in a howling blizzard...

(FWIW I don't lube my wheel bolt threads but I do use a torque wrench to tighten them. When I switched my wheels over a few weeks ago they all came undone using a 10" bar on the socket and either body weight or leg strength. And that was after a prolonged cold spell at the end of a cold winter meaning that the local roads had been gritted fairly regularly - and sometimes almost daily - over a three to four month period.)

[Llanigraham]

I've come to the conclusion that the locking nuts are a waste of time and shall be getting 4 wheels nuts to replace mine.

[FlintstoneR1]

A smidgin (tech term!) of coppaslip on the tip of bolt threads stops 'em seizing into the hubs with the winter salt spray penetration. But NOT on the conical face that mates onto the wheel itself, nor the full length of the thread. Those have to remain dry for the torque / friction to work properly, as said above. As always with coppaslip / copper grease around brakes - a little can be good - too much is BAD!

Similarly, a fine smear on the hub / wheel spigot reduces the dissimilar metal corrosion (especially for alloys*) that leads to the wheel seizing stuck to the hub. (It's fine punching it with your foot from the far side to unseize it when the car's on a dry workshop floor and securely on axle stands (or even better rally-style stands positively located into the sills), but you don't want to be doing that on a motorway hard shoulder, at night, in the rain, with car on nowt but the basic emergency jack!!). As a BMW driver, I'm sure I've read somewhere about it being recommended for the wheel's mating face too, but would take that advisedly for the reasons suggested above.

My trusty old torque wrench doesn't do Nm as its nearly as old as me! (A present from a grateful former girl friend for fixing her car regularly (she had a mini as well as a 1954 Riley RM!). The gf moved on many, many moons ago, but I got to keep the torque wrench! Wouldn't know where I'd be without it? My Haynes dust cover reckons 120Nm equates to approx. 90 lbs ft. (sounds about right for an alloy wheel & steel bolts?) As per the OP and several others - the important thing is not to OVER tighten them!

* The scientists and metallurgists out there will be familiar with this, but aluminium alloy (wheel) + steel (hub) + salt water (the perfect electrolyte!), will form the ideal corrosion cell, with the alloy coming off worst - I think because it always becomes the cathode - but the experts will correct me I'm sure?

That's why North Sea rigs have alu blocks bolted to the steel legs at intervals in the tide/wave washed zone - so the alu is sacrificed and that stops the legs themselves from corroding. (My nephew's job is inspecting and replacing the blocks annually!)

Edited 29 April, 2013 by FlintstoneR1

[JCP]

I've come to the conclusion that the locking nuts are a waste of time and shall be getting 4 wheels nuts to replace mine.

I have done just this. Last year I tried and failed to change my own winters-I couldn't get sufficient force to hold the wheel nut key onto the nut even though I had an extending bar more than capable of undoing an ordinary nut.

[Llanigraham]

Henry/Flinstone

A little pedantry from me....................

The "little blocks" on the legs are called "sacrificial anodes" and are invariably an alloy of several metals including aluminium and zinc.

You will find the same thing on the hulls of steel narrow boats and often on the "legs" of outboard motors.

[Bobdog]

I've come to the conclusion that the locking nuts are a waste of time and shall be getting 4 to replace mine.

Well at your age I guess the old ones are worn out, but why do you need 4?

[loftypeak2]

Did they change the winters to summers over for me? Nope they wanted £40 for that! So I laughed, drove back to my mates' place and we swapped them there.

I deal with my local, independent tyre company in Buxton. I bought the winter tyres there and they change my wheels at the beginning and the end of the winter free of charge.

[loftypeak2]

Well at your age I guess the old ones are worn out, but why do you need 4?

Locking nuts eh, shades of Muffin the Mule?

Edited 29 April, 2013 by loftypeak2

[Llanigraham]

Well at your age I guess the old ones are worn out, but why do you need 4?

Bob,

I realise that senility is passing you by rapidly, but perhaps because I've got 4 locking ones to replace :wall:

And if you were (??) being rude then I think you know where you need to be, and I'm sorry but Marie isn't in there, which might be lucky for her!!

Looks like Lofty better join you!!

And anyway, they work perfectly, thank you.

[Bobdog]

Locking nuts eh, shades of Muffin the Mule?

That's a criminal offence these days.

[900000]

My friends did laugh at my F1 "tyre warmers" !

They are brilliant at showing you which tyre goes where though!

[ejstubbs]

They are brilliant at showing you which tyre goes where

I use a strip of white insulating tape on each wheel, and a marker pen. Maybe not gucci F1 stylee but it works very well.

[Steph64]

Are they the Richbrook ones? If s,o good piece of kit for the price (I use them for my trackday wheels/tyres).

[ernieb]

I use string and paper labels, like the tyre warmers though.

[900000]

Are they the Richbrook ones? If s,o good piece of kit for the price (I use them for my trackday wheels/tyres).

I can't remember! I just clicked on the link somewhere in the tyre section of this very forum and bought them! I don't think they are Richbrook. But from memory everyone on that thread say what they got looked the same. So I suspect they all come from the same place.

[900000]

Found it:

http://www.briskoda....40#entry2991057

There is links there to ebay and where I got mine from. I got the first ones without the Richbrook logo. The second link is to the Richbrook ones.

[domhnall]

Saw the very same things with a skoda badge on them at the weekend.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

[CFB]

I deal with my local, independent tyre company in Buxton. I bought the winter tyres there and they change my wheels at the beginning and the end of the winter free of charge.

Yup same here.

I use a local independent.

They charged my £15 to change from summer wheels.

I noticed, when cleaning them, that some of the balance weights had fallen off and some had partially slipped round the wheel.

The wheels have never been balanced before so I think it ight be a consequence of rough roads and potholes.

Not noticeable when driving though so it might be worth checking yours?

Changing from winter wheels back to summers, they again charged me only £15 total and that was for the balancing and fitting

Result.