Locking wheel nut removal in N22 on a Volvo S60

New customer called to say that she needed the locking wheel nuts removed from her Volvo S60 as she had a puncture and needed the tyre to be repaired.

Took the details of the tyre as we always like to take a tyre to a puncture repair in case the tyre cannot be fixed, the tyre size is 225/45/17, she only does local driving so I recommend an Autogrip tyre which would suit her driving requirements.

Loaded the tyre up and set off to meet the client where the car was stranded.

Arrived at the job and the first thing to do was get the locking wheel nuts off, she had already had a recovery service come to the car to try and remove the locking wheels nut but they had not been able to remove them, all of our vans carry special equipment that can remove locking wheel nuts when the key is either damaged or has been lost. Broke out the tool and selected the correct blade to remove the locking wheel nut, 10 minutes latter all 4 locking wheel nuts had been removed so know I could focus on the flat tyre.

Jacked up the front driver's side wheel (which is where the punctured tyre was) and removed the wheel, on inspection of the tyre found that the side wall had been gashed and now had a 2 inch tear in it, looks like it came from running the tyre against the kerb. Damage to the side wall cannot be repaired so I showed the customer the damage and explained that the tyre would have to be replaced.

Put the wheel on the tyre wall and removed the damaged tyre, inspected the wheel for any possible damage (none found except some marks from the wheel running against the kerb) and then started the tyre replacement.

First thing to do is put a new rubber valve in, you should always have a new valve fitted when a new tyre is mounted, would be a shame to get another flat tyre on your new tyre from an aged rubber valve. Valve fitted I pasted up the tyre and mounted it onto the wheel.

Now time to balance it, the reason to balance a tyre after you have fitted it is because you have to counter act any weight imbalance from the manufacturing process, spun the wheel up on the balancer and came back needing 25 grams, added the weight and spun the wheel up again to check the balance, came back as zero so the wheel/tyre are now balanced.

Mounted the wheel back on the car and torqued the wheel nuts up to the correct setting, luckily the customer had the 4 original wheel nuts in the boot that had been removed when the locking wheel nuts had been put on. Put one wheel nut on each wheel and torqued these up to the correct torque as well.

Checked the tread depth and tyre pressure of the other 3 wheels on the car and then checked the spare wheel, spare wheel had plenty of tread but only had 10 pounds of pressure in it, normal problem that we find as nobody normally checks the pressure in the spare which can be a pain if you need to use it and it is flat. Pumped it up to 40 psi which is more than the car needs but allows the spare to sit there without being checked for a while.

Filled out all the paper work and took payment via our card reader. All done so off to the next job.

If you have locking wheel nuts that need to be removed or maybe a puncture in one of your tyres call Hometyre on 0800 783 9310 (or 0333 444 5454 mobile friendly number) and we will come to you.