Why are my Wheel nuts so tight.

If you have ever had a puncture by the side of the road you probably know how difficult it can be to remove your wheel nuts with the wheel brace the car manufacturers give you, it is almost as if the nuts have been welded to your wheel. Quite often you will be stamping on the brace bar with your foot trying to loosen the nut and hoping that the bar does not go flying off and hit your car.

Well how can this be? The chances are that last time you had your tyre changed you went to a tyre depot and happily sat in the cold waiting room while the staff fitted new tyres to your pride and joy, while you where reading a 2 year old copy of "What Car?" you probably heard in the back ground a rat-a-tat-tat of an air gun doing up the wheels on your car. The trouble with these air guns is that you have no control over the force they exert on the wheel nut. You just turn them on and then when you think the wheel nuts are tight enough you turn them off, not the most precise piece of equipment. They can also apply much more force to the wheel nuts than you can with the small wheel brace the manufactures supply with their cars.

Each car manufacturer specifies a torque setting that should be applied to the wheel nuts on their cars, an example of this is a Nissan 350Z. The torque setting for these wheels is 113 Newton Meters. So how are you going to set this correctly with an air gun and just as importantly is the wheel on tight enough? Too loose and your wheel could come off, too tight and the nuts can sheer (and the wheel can come off).

We at Hometyre always use a toque wrench to tighten the nuts these can be set exactly to 113 Newton Meters so you know your wheel nuts are tightened to the correct specifications.

Now onto the locking wheel nuts, these generally have either a pattern on the inside of the locking wheel nut key that fits into the corresponding locking wheel nut or a set of pins or ridges that stick out and fit into holes in the locking wheel nut. All these keys are inherently weaker than a normal wheel nut; the pattern on the locking wheel nut key does not have the same thickness of metal as a solid bolt. Take an air gun to these and you can split the locking wheel nut key as you do the bolt up, rendering the key useless.

So there you are by the side of the road, you have jumped up and down on the wheel brace and at last got your normal wheel nuts free but the locking wheel nut key will not fit the locking wheel nut bolt. You are stuck and the only thing you can do is hope that your recovery service membership is up to date so you can be towed home and then try to arrange the removal of the locking wheel nut bolt from your wheels.

Things don't have to be that way. Call Hometyre and we will come to you and change your tyres or fix your punctures, we will then torque the wheel nuts up to the correct tightness (all our vans carry a chart that shows the recommended torque settings) and place the locking wheel nut back where we found it and mark this on the invoice for your future reference.

What if you have a locking wheel nut that you cannot get off because the locking wheel nut key is damaged? All of our vans carry a specialist tool that can remove locking wheel nut when the locking wheel nut key has been damaged or lost.

So, don't put yourself in a position that you are stranded by the side of the road contact Hometyre in the first place and have the job done correctly by Tyre professionals.