Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
If you ever lose your key, there are plenty of YouTube videos showing how you can easily defeat any locking lug nut.
Without doing the research myself, can you summarize the methods for all of us? I know you can weld a bolt to them. With cheap ones you can hammer a hardened socket down on a mild steel lock nut. What else works? And for what values of "easily"?
I am buying a set of locking lugnuts from the dealer for $82. I refuse to pay their shop prices to have them installed. (If you are wondering why buy from a dealer, it is because dealer locking lugnuts are better than the kind you can buy at AutoZone or O'Reilly since they match the other lugnuts and are weighted specifically for your car so you don't have to pay for a rebalance.)
Can I just take a lugnut off with a four-way tire wrench and put the new one on, without taking the other lugnuts off? Will this warp the wheel? I do have a torques wrench in my car to also (you are not supposed to ever use an impact wrench to install a lugnut; only to remove it--they do it wrong in the Nascar races).
Do I need to raise the car on a jack first? In the past when I have taken off just one lugnut on a car with the vehicle on the ground, the wheel moved a little! I would then have to raise it off the ground to make sure the lugnut was seated all the way when torqued.
You really are making way too much of one of the most simple jobs when working on a car. Simply tighten them a little at a time in a criss cross pattern, until you do the final torqueing with a torque wrench to the specs your manufacturer calls for.
As for NASCAR doing it wrong, if there are any people on the planet who do it more accurately, please show them to me. Those impact sockets they use are calibrated to stop at a specific torque, I have a complete set of them myself.
Which is why I don't see the point in getting locking lug nuts.
In my shop we have a set of sockets made to remove locking lug nuts, so they are available. But the majority of everyday thieves do not have them, nor do they know the shadetree tricks to get them off, so locking ones are not a bad idea. I am getting ready to install a fairly expensive set of wheels on one of my cars, and am going to put locks on them just because.
As mentioned, they make removal sockets to get locking lug nuts off. If you google them, you can see the various types. You can also by a kit for under $100 that has every one of the "key" sockets included (it is called a locking lug master key set). Thieves are a little more savvy these days and they carry cordless impact wrenches and grinders to remove nuts and cut bolts or chains. You will stop a petty thief with locking lugs but the career criminal will have your wheels off in less time than it would take you to dig around and find your key socket. Besides that we all know and the thieves do too that almost everyone puts the key to their lug nuts in the console, glove compartment or where the spare is located. I don't know how many times I have seen a car with the wheels stolen and one of the windows broken out.
Don't get me wrong, I still put locking lugs on my good wheels just so if they do want to steal them, they at least have to work a little harder. You should just be aware that they can and will steal them anyway if they want to and have an opportunity.
This is the way I would do it, assuming that all the lug nuts have been properly torqued already: with the vehicle parked on the ground, I would remove a lug nut and replace it with the lockable lug nut, then torque this lug nut to specifications. Or you can take it to a tire shop, where more than likely the tire person will do the same as I do. Don't believe for a minute that they are going to remove and re-torque all the lug nuts just to replace one of these with a new one.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
