Locking wheel nut bolts are designed to increase the security of your Alloy tyres and wheels. They’re notoriously difficult to successfully remove, potentially damaging the wheel and tyres permanently. The wheels of your car are attached with a bolt or a nut. Bolts have a threaded shaft which fits into your wheel hub, and nut have an internal thread, allowing it to fit onto a stud that comes out of the wheel hub.
There are various types of locking wheel nut bolts, and they all have the potential to have problems. The type of locking wheel nut bolt you need is dependent on your make of car, as different manufacturers will use different types. It’s extremely important that the correct type of locking wheel nut bolt is used for your car in order to keep your wheels safe and secure.
What is a locking wheel nut?
Locking wheel nuts (or bolts) are fitted to vehicles to protect expensive alloy wheels from theft. The wheel nut key should allow you to safely and efficiently release the bolt when necessary, but there are a number of occasions when you won’t have the key, such as:
- Buying a second hand car with no bolt key
- You lose the key
- The key can become damaged through being used incorrectly
- Over-tightened wheel nuts can break the key
Standard locking wheel nuts
Standard locking wheel nuts are the most common type, and have no spinning or rotating collar. The majority of cars use this type of locking wheel nut with its simple keyed face.
Spinning or rotating locking wheel nuts
Some car manufacturers produce cars with a spinning or rotating collar in order to prevent traditional removal procedures from working. Standard locking wheel nut removal tools don’t work due to a rotating or spinning collar around the wheel nut.
Designed as a security measure against thieves after high end wheels, there are now plenty of tools on the market that can remove these locking wheel nuts easily and within seconds.
Spinning or rotating locking wheel nuts quickly become troublesome and expensive when you lose the key, and in such cases the only safe option is to visit a professional.
Shear head locking wheel nuts
Commonly found on Peugeot and Citroen cars, shear head wheel nuts can be the most annoying and difficult locking wheel nuts to remove. They’ve been designed to shear off at the head of the nut, leaving the body of the bolt behind if you attempt to remove it without the proper key. This in itself isn’t necessarily problematic, but the bolts and their keys can be prone to fail, even when they’re used as intended. Once more, the best thing to do is have them removed by a professional and replaced with a more standard type of locking wheel nut.
What to do if you need to remove your locking wheel nut
As soon as you know you need to remove your locking wheel nut, make sure you have your key. This is by far the simplest and quickest way to remove your locking wheel nuts. If you’ve lost your key, there are various methods with which some people have occasionally achieved success, but a professional locking wheel nut removal technician is the only way to ensure success.
Common methods people try at home
At Locking Wheelnut Removal Service, we often end up helping motorists who have unsuccessfully tried to remove their wheel nuts. There are a variety of tricks, hacks and tutorials in the internet that have supposedly worked for the people who’ve posted them, but not our clients. Here are some of the most common failed methods we hear about when we successfully remove locking wheel nuts.
Using lubricant for wheel nut removal
We have a lot of clients telling us they’ve been told to apply lubricant to the wheel nut before attempting to remove it. It’s true that there are special lubricants on the market for specifically removing wheel nuts, but these often don’t work. The idea of this lubricant is to simply turn the nut after the liquid sinks into the areas between the thread and nut.
Often, people find that this simply doesn’t work as the nuts just don’t come lose.
Using the (incorrect) wrench
All too many people will use an incorrect lug wrench in an attempt to remove their wheel nuts. The condition of the wrench and the size are important factors in whether you’ll succeed with this method. The proper wrench, such as a drive impact wrench, will increase your chances of removing the wheel nut.
The problem with this home method is that too many people will use a wrench to try and force the wheel nut loose. This often damages the threads, causing a separate but serious problem that can only be fixed by an experienced mechanic.
Locking wheel nut removal with a torch
All too often, in a last desperate attempt to remove a wheel nut, people will try and use a torch to heat up the lug nut. It’s claimed that the heat will eliminate an underlying problem responsible for holing the wheel nut in place, but we often have people telling us they’ve tried this with no success.
Locking wheel nut removal is not a simple task, and trying to remove them yourself will at best do nothing, and at worst, seriously damage your wheels and tyres. This damage is far more expensive and difficult to repair than having a professional locking wheel nut removal mechanic simply remove the locking wheelnut.
Why you should get your locking wheel nuts removed by a professional
Having your locking wheel nuts removed by a professional is the best route to take, for a number of reasons:
If you need your locking wheel nuts removed in Birmingham or the surrounding areas, contact us or call 0121 733 1956 today.
