Truck nuts are a pretty basic concept. Someone figured it would be fun and affordable to sell molded plastic testicles to hang from your tow hitch. The joke was funny for about three seconds, the creator presumably made bank, and the world moved on. Only, now there’s a new kind of truck nuts on the scene, and they’re perfect for EVs.
Meet wire truck nuts. Or truck wire nuts, depending on which way you want to flip it. If you’re unfamiliar, wire nuts are small plastic devices used for making electrical connections between two wires. Basically, someone decided to recreate wire nuts at a larger scale and threw them on the back of a truck for the laughs.
That someone is named Charlie Wil, who uploaded design files for a 3D-printed set of truck wire nuts to Thingiverse back in August this year. They faithfully recreate the simple wire fixing at a larger scale, and easily hold a loop of wire for attaching them to a vehicle.
If you want to make your own truck wire nuts, it’s pretty easy. You just download the files from Thingiverse, and print them out on your own 3D printer at home. They’re pretty simple, geometrically speaking, so you should be able to whip up a set on just about any FDM or resin printer out there.
These things are already showing up in the wild. Digital creator BJ Adams spotted them on a Ford F-150 Lightning out in the wild, and he took to Facebook to share the hilarious find. The install was great for two reasons. One, it’s on an EV—given the wire nuts are electrical in nature, they’re perfectly suited in this case. Plus, the truck owner chose to install two, with red and black wires—emulating the positive and negative lines of a DC hookup. Authentic and fun!
Other Lightning owners have installed them, too. As above, there’s a truck getting around Alabama with a similar setup, as seen on Reddit. A user named Kenric also posted a great set over on the F-150 Lightning Forum, too.
These are an easy laugh when installed on an EV. They’d also be a right laugh on an electrician’s truck or van, whether or not it’s an electric vehicle. The fun is in knowing why they’re there—they’re a simple electrical part that are referencing genitals indirectly—because they’re hanging off the back of a truck. It’s smart, a sort of multi-level joke. The sort of thing you’d see on Frasier!
These aren’t the only 3D-printed truck nuts going, either. Over at the Shitty Car Mods page on Reddit, someone posted a great set of Cybertruck nuts. They’re appropriately angular and jagged, with the low-poly design rather fitting for the truck’s unique aesthetics. Files are available for those wishing to print their own at home, courtesy of regsix7 on Thingiverse.
It was only a matter of time…
byu/-Insigwitz- inShitty_Car_Mods
Just in case you’ve gotten this far and you’re completely unfamiliar, we should post some regular truck nuts for context. As mentioned above, they’re basically just simulated scrotums that you hang off the back of a truck. I’ve posted some photos below so you might understand them from a visual perspective.
Amazingly, you can even get truck nuts for RC cars, too. RPM RC sells them for $7.95 a piece.
I’ll make a quick sidebar here to point out something important. The reason we usually see these on trucks is because “car nuts” just doesn’t roll off the tongue as well. It’s all down to the English language—”truck” and “nut” both have an “uh” sound that makes “truck nuts” fun to say. If they’d have nicknamed them “car nards,” we’d probably see a lot more of them on Nissan Altras and Kia Seratos.
In any case, it’s great to see such creativity in the wider truck nuts fanbase. The joke was getting old and stale, no surprise since they’ve been around since the 1980s. This new concept has breathed fresh life into the pastime of dangling funny junk off the back of your vehicle. That’s something worth celebrating.
Image credits: Charles047 via Thingiverse, BJ Adams via Facebook screenshot, Jkfcfriedchix CC-BY-SA 4.0
I once snuck in and hung a blue set on my buddy’s long haul truck while he was asleep. Took him three days to find his balls…
“RPM RC sells them for $7.95 a piece”
A piece, or a pair?
OK but if someone did want to do car nuts, they need to install them the same way as they used to do the JDM train grab-handles – so that they drag along the ground to indicate that the car is lowered enough.
I don’t put it past a dolt using a Traxxas to put tiny truck nuts on their RC
…genuine Traxxas Xmaxx accessory, only $99.99! Could see this on a CEN F450 as well…
This is one of the funniest things I have ever seen on this site.
Thank you.
I know a plumber who has hung a pair of those black ball things from a toilet on the back of his van.
I think they have a technically correct name.
But I’m not gonna take that chance today.
they are called floats I think?
You’re thinking of a ballcock valve. The floating balls are just called floats.
truck nuts are stupid. these are equally stupid but not as crass. also, why just nuts, why not truck penis as well or is the car the metaphorical penis
Look at the rear of a dog. You see the nuts but the not the dong.
Just be careful backing up. Slamming those into something really hertz.
OK. Well done, Sir.
Ohm my god it does!
That’s a shockingly bad joke!
Sedan Nads
Freaking hilarious. In my mind this is taking the piss, but I wonder if some of the Lightning owners aren’t being ironic.
This is exactly the second set of truck nuts that have made me laugh. The only other one was on a flatdeck F-350 with a welding rig. They were two massive hex nuts, welded to a length of chain.
Several years ago after I got a Bolt, a tech at work did this for fun, welding a couple ~1″ machine nuts to some chain and stuck it on my hitch. After a while I took it off, since it made putting the hitch bike rack on a bit more of a chore, and I didn’t want it to come off in traffic, but could be fun to put it back on again, especially this time of year when they would be covered in ice.
He was also thinking about welding a couple 1/4″ nuts to some mini chain for another coworker’s HD diesel truck, but never got around to it.
Do they make custom lines with one red and one black wire, for added irony?
Worst timeline.
Can we start referring to all the items of dubious functionality that people drive around with shoved into their receivers as butt plugs?
That would imply buttplugs have dubious functionality, and I will not stand for that.
Well, I don’t know, is standing or sitting better in that situation?
I took my 93-year-old mother to see Everything Everywhere All at Once, and I wasn’t looking forward to explaining that to her, but fortunately, there was so much other stuff to explain.
My buddy used to have an old Honda CRX that he adorned with truck nuts that suffered from a case of gigantism. While they look pathetic on actual trucks, they look hilarious on a small car… imagine them on a miata.
Waiting to see what the girls do….
Bumper Boobies. They’ll be fixed to the front and feature various sizes and shapes.
AKA Dagmars.
Remember when Lyft made their drivers put massive magenta mustaches on their cars?
Around here there are a couple cybertrucks wearing antlers on the roof.
I can’t remember chapter and verse in Revelations, but I’m at least 90% sure this is in there as a sign of the coming apocolypse
According to the book of Enoch, it was aliens that brought the truck nuts here in the first place.
https://biblia.com/bible/nkjv/revelation/13/3-4
There is something about the Anticrist surviving an apparent head wound, and becoming popular and ending up in charge. then somthing about him raining fire on the eartn.
Reminds me of someone.
Well that explains the inscrotable.
Coming soon to a Hummer near you?
Posted a meme about this yesterday on discord
I’ll start the arguing:
Wagos are better.
It’s pronounced “huevos”. (Yes, I know about wagos, and agree they are better, but couldn’t pass that up.)
I love Wagos and my huge jar of scavenged conventional wire nuts will probably pass to my heirs who will wonder what the hell they are.
No argument possible. I was going to post that, as an electrical engineer, I have a passionate dislike for wire nuts and replace them with Wagos any time I can. Wagos are far, far superior.
Why am I just now learning about these?
I wired my entire kitchen using wire nuts and 12g, which really tested my baby soft hands. I discovered WAGOs when I took up a bathroom remodel, it was like sex without a condom. Those Europeans are smarts.
Wow, these are legal/allowable in US wiring codes? They must be, since Home Depot is selling them. Damn. Minor reasons to be happy.
Yep! Lotta overhead lights I’ve used come with those wired in at the end, though the really cheap lights still toss you a couple of nuts and some bare leads.
Yes, they are UL listed.
Seriously, why now when I’m done rewriting my house?!? Those look great.
My son got me hooked on these about 2 years ago. They are great for 12V solar systems too. I went so far as to rewire the barn PV system with these. I hope whomever invented these gets a royalty on every one. Especially great when you have to connect wires of different gauges.
Yes they are. They are also like 10x the price too.
God bless America.
This is just nuts. Question: If you put a bra on the front of your truck and nuts at the back, does this make it transportation?
It depends on the transmission.
Don’t be cocky
maybe a Vehicross
No, but if 2 trucks do this and have a contest to see who is fastest, it is called drag racing.
It’s probably illegal in Tennessee and 26 other states anyway if your truck is under 18 years old.
LOL
I mean, you could argue that just adding the nuts alone achieves that. It’s not like trucks come from the factory with nuts. 😉
Yesterday I noticed that you get picked pretty often for COTD and figured the writers were just biased towards you. Turns out you’re really fucking funny. 10/10.
It depends on how the middle is shifted.
A testement to advances in automotive design.
These engineers are definitely keeping their eye on the ball.
This.
Is.
Genius!