Sooner or later, it happens to the best of us, we get a flat tire. Most of us have a roadside assistance membership of some kind but it is always good to know how to do this.
Safety First:
Loosening the Lug Nuts:
Call Our Tire Experts at 877-720-8576 to Quickly Get You Back on the Road
Jack Up the Car and Remove the lug Nuts:
Attach the Spare Tire:
On the Ground:
Clean Up
If you are lucky a tire isn't completely destroyed when it goes flat. If the flat is caused by a nail or other sharp object, and you can't or don't want to change your tire you may be able to give yourself a few miles of leeway by using a flat-fix type spray. Simply follow the manufacturer's directions. In ideal situations, the spray foam will allow you to at least find a close off-ramp and pull into a service station or a rest stop before you have to change your tire.
If your tires appear worn or you have had a flat tire and need it fixed or replaced, contact our service department for a fast and cost-efficient solution.
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Posted by Benjamin Hunting Know How
A seized lug nut can turn the simple task of changing a tire into a frustrating experience.
It doesn’t have to be that way — there are a number of tricks on how to loosen a nut that just won’t budge, so you can get the job done and get back on the road. Let’s look at the basic steps you should go through when dealing with a stuck lug nut.
Most of the time, a seized lug nut won’t lighten its grip due to corrosion, which happens when water, road salt and oxygen mix where the threads meet. It can also occur at the base of the nut, cementing it in place.
The least labor-intensive way to break a rusty lug nut free is by soaking it in a product like WD-40, PB Blaster or some other oil-based lubricant. Spray it at the base of the nut and wait, as long as you can, for the oil to work its way through the threads and between the nut and the metal of your hub. If you can, try leaving it overnight.
2. Choose the Right SocketIf your socket isn’t tight enough, it won’t be able to properly grip and turn the seized lug nut.
In fact, a loose socket is more likely to spin around the nut and round off its edges, creating a second problem for you to deal with. Ensure that the socket you are using is the right size, and that it’s on as tight as possible before applying torque.
You can increase the amount of torque by lengthening the arm of the driver used to spin the socket. Use as long of a driver handle as you can, and then fit a piece of hollow piping over the handle to further extend the arc. This can add two to three times as much torque to that initial turning action, which is often what is needed to break the lug nut loose. You can also hammer it, or jump down on the bar (as long as it’s tightly secured), to add extra turning force.
Avoid Power ToolsWhile it might be tempting to use an impact wrench to remove a seized lug nut, it’s not the best idea. More often than not, an impact driver will simply round off the nut rather than break it free if it’s really stuck.
The above steps — combined with patience and time — are the best options for easy lug nut removal.
Check out all the tire and wheel products available on NAPAonline or trust one of our 17,000 NAPA Auto Care locations for routine maintenance and repairs. For more information on dealing with a seized lug nut, chat with a knowledgeable expert at your local NAPA Auto Parts store.
Photo courtesy of Creative Commons.
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Know How
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hardware, lug nut, lug nut remover, nut, removing rusted nuts and bolts, rust, wheel stud, wheels
Having been bitten by the car bug at a young age, I spent my formative years surrounded by Studebakers at car shows across Quebec and the northeastern United States. Over ten years of racing, restoring, and obsessing over automobiles lead me to balance science writing and automotive journalism full time. I currently contribute as an editor to several online and print automotive publications, and I also write and consult for the pharmaceutical and medical device industry.
Photo: AvtoVzglyad
Collapsed bolts and studs, "slicked" edges of the car increase the cost of repair. How to disassemble threaded connections and keep fasteners intact? The experts of the portal "AvtoVzglyad" will prompt.
Lika Shutter
Very often repair or maintenance of a car begins with the disassembly of threaded connections. For example, when a seasonal tire change occurs. By itself, the process of unscrewing the bolts is not difficult, but only if the fasteners resist. As practice shows, during the summer season, wheel bolts and nuts can boil.
A rolled bolt, especially when its body is left in the hole, will either have to be drilled or removed with an extractor (this is such a special reverse screw that is screwed counterclockwise into a pre-drilled hole in the body of the bolt or stud), which requires a special tool , and experience.
If you act ineptly, then it is quite easy to damage the threads in the well, and then you will have to correct it with the help of taps, which, again, not everyone has. Well, “dancing with tambourines”, when a steel bar is welded to a broken bolt in order to unscrew its remnants, this is generally aerobatics.
Who has a welding machine? Who can accurately and at the same time securely “grab” the details? Not only will you have to pay extra for this work, but how much time will you have to kill searching for and buying the necessary fasteners. Therefore, taking care of how to unscrew the soured fasteners so as not to damage it is worth it in advance.
Photo: AvtoVzglyad
To avoid all the problems described above, experts recommend using specialized tools that make it easier to disassemble soured fasteners and minimize the likelihood of damage. We are talking about the so-called penetrating lubricants, including all kinds of "liquid keys".
Actually, the name speaks for itself, and their main property is precisely penetrating, that is, how quickly the composition will penetrate into the joint, and it will lend itself to unscrewing.
By the way, one of the best among them is the Liquid Key from Astrohim. As practice confirms, the domestic composition effectively impregnates rust, minimizing the shear moment, and it will not be necessary to “soak” soured fasteners for a long time.
Compounds of this kind are applied directly to fasteners that have been previously cleaned of dirt and rust. After a few minutes, you can pick up tools and unscrew the fasteners, which should “go” with less effort
and, most importantly, stay safe and sound. Shamanism? — no, physics and chemistry in action!
Photo: AvtoVzglyad
The active composition, penetrating through the micropores into the gaps between the parts, delivers lubricating components there. It is they that impregnate the corrosion products and reduce the shear moment of the "stuck" elements relative to each other. But the effect is achieved only on the condition that the composition penetrates as deep as possible into the soured compound. What's the point if it wets only the surface layer of rust?!
Therefore, in order not to jump on the balloon wrench or not to use an extension (pipe), risking turning off the fasteners or loosening the stud (it can turn in the drum or hub), you can simply soak it with a “liquid wrench” and unscrew it without barbaric methods.
The highly penetrating compound is also useful if you remove the wheel and find that the brake pads and discs are worn and need to be replaced. Having processed the mountings of the discs, calipers and brackets, we take a smoke break, calmly unscrew them and change the worn parts to new ones. The winter road places special demands not only on the tires, but also on the brakes, which must always work flawlessly.
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To repair or replace a wheel, you must first remove it from the vehicle. Modern tire shops use pneumatic or electric wrenches, often referred to simply as guns, to speed up the work. If the tool torque is incorrectly adjusted, the bolts will be overtightened. Therefore, it is important for car owners to know what to do if the wheel bolts are tightened with a gun and cannot be unscrewed.
Each car manufacturer sets individual bolt torques for their models. These values should be given in the documentation. Of course, it is difficult to imagine a tire fitting worker carefully consulting multi-page tables that indicate the recommended torque for any brand.
In practice, everything is much simpler. Even in tire shops that are in good standing, it is practiced to use the optimal bolt torque for most cases. It is easy to assume that for unscrupulous craftsmen, the wrench is set to an arbitrary torque, obviously exceeding the required value.
This will ensure that the bolts are tightened as quickly as possible and do not loosen.
The thread will of course not be stripped immediately. Industrially produced bolts, made from the required steel and heat treated to optimal conditions, successfully cope with excessive tightening forces. But a person who has to unscrew the bolts after careless service workers will definitely have difficulties.
Preliminary work must be done before loosening the bolts. This operation is always performed according to the same algorithm.
Perform the following steps :
They can be replaced by brick fragments or medium-sized stones found on the road. This completes the preparation procedure. It's time to start loosening the bolts.
When faced with the problem of over-tightening bolts, it is useful to remember how almost all motorists tightened and loosened bolts 50 years ago. They applied force to the balloon wrench not with their hands, but with their feet. It was so much easier and more convenient. This will be the first, most obvious method.
All you need is one tool that should be in every driver's kit - wheel wrench . To unscrew it, you need to tightly put the wrench on the hexagon. It is worth starting with a little effort, resting your foot on the handle.
If this is not enough, you will have to apply your entire body weight, stepping on the key with one foot and lifting the other off the ground.
You can even jump on it, the vibration makes it easier to unscrew. Balance is easy to maintain if you rest your hands on the roof of the car.
If the simplest method does not help, you will have to use something more convenient. You can smoothly increase the torque on the key using the lever.
Fits 9 for shank extension0093 piece of any pipe of suitable section. Hoping that the right pipe will be found on the road is not worth it. It is best to always carry a suitable segment with you.
If the mass of the pipe does not suit you, you can also find titanium. It is lighter in weight, but loses steel in strength.
The force on the lever can be applied either by hand or by your own weight.
If the classic method fails and the pipe does not work, shock loads should be used.
This can be done in two ways :
In the vast majority of cases, these methods will remove bolts that have been tightened to an excessively high torque. If none of them helped, then most likely it's not the tightening force, but corrosion. universal WD-40 or regular kerosene will help to cope with it. It is enough to apply the composition to the bolts, hold for 10 minutes and try again to unscrew.
