As far as underappreciated car parts go, the humble lug nut is right up there. These little guys have to hold a wheel on — a pretty critical task — and stand up to multiple wheel swaps throughout a vehicle’s life. It’s a thankless task, only drawn attention to when something goes really wrong, and you’d think that a basic fastener would be simple enough to make correctly, right? However, by cheaping out on making a certain type of lug nuts look good rather than function well, automakers have given consumers one giant pain in the ass.
Over the past few decades, a proliferation of aluminum alloy wheels has led to increased demand for better-looking lug nuts. While there’s something earnest about unadorned wheel fasteners, people like the look of chrome on lug nuts, and chrome is a fairly durable coating. It doesn’t like to rust nearly as much as bare steel, it stands up to power tools well, and there’s an almost corvid appeal to shiny objects.
The problem is that chroming an entire lug nut isn’t the cheapest way to go, and if there’s a way to save a few cents per car, that can add up to millions of dollars in efficiencies over several years. As a result, wheel fastener suppliers came up with the chrome-capped lug nut by taking a standard unadorned steel lug nut and pressing on a thin, decorative chromed cap on each lug nut that’s non-removable. Unlike Volkswagen’s purely ornamental plastic wheel bolt covers, these chromed caps can support the torque of an impact wrench and are permanently fixed to the wheel retaining hardware so they won’t come loose or get lost.
The problem arises when moisture finds its way in between the steel lug nut and chromed cap. Trapped moisture leads to corrosion, and because the cap is relatively thin, the corrosion forces it to expand outward. If it expands far enough, the lug wrench that came with your car to change a tire on the side of the road might not fit, and that’s a real pickle to find yourself in should you get a flat.
In addition, it’s also a pain in the butt for mechanics, not just because the expected socket might not fit, but because the chromed caps can weaken from years of corrosion and peel back like razor-sharp tin foil when hit with an impact wrench. Add in the fact that when chrome-capped lug nuts fail, owners will be on the hook for new hardware, and while that isn’t a huge expense, it’s still an unexpected one.
Seven years ago, Ford was actually sued over the two-piece lug nuts (ones that have a sheetmetal cap over top of the less-pretty nut that actually does the clamping — see this article about how to remove them) the automaker installed on millions of vehicles, with the class-action complaint claiming “The defective nature of Ford’s lug nuts renders the vehicles that they are used on dangerous and unfit for their ordinary purpose of providing safe and reliable transportation.” However, Ford Authority reports that the suit was dismissed in 2019, meaning these lug nuts are still out there causing problems, and owners have little in the way of recourse.
However, it’s not just Ford using two-piece lug nuts. Chrysler also uses them, GM uses them, they’ve been on everything from full-sized trucks to muscle cars to compact sedans, and they’re annoying in every application. A more memorable expression of fury is a Reddit post titled “Has anyone thrown their old lug nuts through the dealership window yet?”, but that’s far from the only case of someone taking to the internet to raise awareness of chrome-clad lug nuts.
Fortunately, there is a solution that’s virtually inevitable — if you have chrome-capped lug nuts, you likely will need to replace them at some point, and when that happens, go for aftermarket one-piece lug nuts. They might be a little bit more expensive but by directly chroming the hardware itself rather than going with a dress-up cap, they won’t ever come apart. We’re talking about a case of “buy once, cry once,” and although more durable single-piece lug nuts should be standard from the factory, the widespread existence of a reasonably priced aftermarket solution makes swollen lug nuts easier to swallow, once the pain of getting them off has subsided.
(Photo credits: Reddit, Hagens Berman)
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I would like to point out a few things I have realized about these nuts.
The caps are usually some form of stainess steel, stainless steel is a tricky material, over torquing, using a 12 point socket and not using some sort of lube or antisieze will kill deez nuts. Not to mention rust jacking/ corrosion that may be the most common killer in the salt belt
all of my daily’s (i usually keep 5-7 years) have had these nuts and save for a few replacements when i get said vehicles from the previous owners i haven’t had any of them fail.
My keys to success are using proper sized 6 sided sockets, torquing them to spec or around 100Ftlbs, using antisieze. I think the antisieze actually seals up the threads keeping moisture from wicking it’s way inside the nut and in-between the zinc plated steel nut and the stainless cap which causes them to corrode and rust jack the stainless cap.
Just like your personal pair, if you take care of these nuts they will give you a long service life. lets be honest, tire techs aren’t the most qualified or mindful professionals and are responsible for most of the nut abuse.
anyway, thanks for reading my rambling Ted talk, I need to get back to actual work.
I do all the same, 6 pt sockets only and hand torque. I also like to put a drop or 2 of oil on the washer.
Yep. The thin, polished, draw-formed and swaged-on stainless jacket with slightly-radiused edges on the hex pattern will tear up (almost acting like a lubricant) if a 12-point socket is repeatedly used, particularly without a total snug-fit, which is apparent on the photos. The bitter complainant could have used a correct-size six-point and gotten many tighten/loosen cycles and years of bright-appearing finish with or without having kept them clean, with no chipping-off and/or rusting like plated parts. It’s one of those things where you can make life easier for yourself if you take a moment to look at what’s going on.
With that, they can eventually get ratty after a few dozen cycles, if you really change tires that much.
I bought a set of McGuard actual chrome nuts for my car-hauler trailer last time I got tires, and they look like utter crap now from my not having diligently kept them clean. Then, if automakers are saving a “few cents per car” by using the stainless caps and substituting mechanical process for electro-chemical, imagine that much hexavalent chromium as well, something they try to avoid these days.
If you’re using antisieze, you need to apply less torque than dry. You can end up stretching your studs.
Valid point, I would like to believe I’m way under the engineering tolerance for the tensile strength of studs, but IDK it hasn’t resulted in my fiery death… YET
Because I wanted to find real data, follow the link chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.gomog.com/allmorgan/bolttorque.pdf
We are more than likely looking at Metric 10.9 M12-1.50 for most wheel studs or M14 1.50 in my case.
Take any new or used OEM wheel stud, securely clamp it into a large bench vise, then go after it with a good-size machinist hammer, trying to bend it over, and see how far you get. Then imagine the likelihood of stretching it w/ a few extra pounds torque. The suckers are one of the toughest parts of a car.
I believe we can thank Pep Boys and Wal-Mart for starting this trend. 😉
I went one piece a few years back. It happened when I had the epiphany one evening that my trailer lug nuts might not be the same socket size as the ones on my main tow vehicle. Thus began my quick and simple journey of tracking down new lug nuts for everything that would fit the factory lug wrench. About a year after this simple side quest, I drove to pick up the boat from storage to prep for a weekend trip. As I opened the garage door, I saw the boat listing to one side while sitting on the trailer. This is not normal. Apparently, I hit something on the way home from our previous outing and irreparably damaged a trailer tire. I was first annoyed at the thought of having to replace the tire, but that annoyance quickly faded to pride in myself for being paranoid and then acting on the paranoia.
Much easier to get a lug wrench that doesn’t suck, which your OEM included lug wrench usually does
This is true, but I also think it’s not a bad idea to have all matching size nuts so one (good) wrench can do them all.
All my cars get 17mm AF M12 nuts. Light, cheap and durable. I used to use that size when I was drifting, and after hundreds of wheel changes they still work fine. I have thin wall 6-sided deep sockets with plastic sleeves to protect the wheels.
I’ve no idea why OEMs use 19/20/21/22mm nuts. It’s got to cost more money, and bigger sockets are more likely to damage wheels.
With a few exceptions, car manufacturers don’t give a single thought
about what happens to their product after 3, maybe 5 years.
I think it was a GM exec who once said, “Our primary product isn’t cars, it’s profits”.
The irony is that GM actually issued a PI bulletin back in 2014 (PI0655A) about the removal and cracking of their two piece stainless steel lug nuts (where they blamed it on using shallow sockets; and recommended using sockets that covered the entire surface area of the lug nut to prevent the cracking)
lol new cars are so dumb
I feel like we need a Jag update, esp. since we’ll wait forever for SWG’s!
The XJ6? I just dropped two huge videos, one last weekend and one the weekend before. You mean another one already? Brother it has been 3 days lol
If this comment is in relation to this article, these nuts aren’t all that new. If it’s just a general comment about new cars, then I’m in total agreement.
I hope you don’t think two piece lug nuts are a new car problem. Almost every manufacturer has been using exclusively two piece capped lug nuts since the 80s, and this has been a problem since then.
Weird. Ive owned an 86 Civic Si, 89 Accord, 89 Prelude Si 4ws, 90 Civic Si, 91 Civic LX sedan, 92 Honda Accord, 94 Dakota, 96 Dodge Neon, 95 Audi S6, 99 Chevy Astro, 00 Honda Insight, 01 VW Golf, 04 Beetle Turbo S and probably a bunch of others. Never had to deal with these before, they seem really stupid.
Not sure why you didn’t….. My 1991 Accord and 1992 Accord came from the factory with two piece lug nuts. Yours should have too. Pretty sure all contemporary Hondas did actually, and I think my friends 1996 Civic has them.
Your Dakota and Neon almost certainly had them too.
We’re your lug nuts just in conveniently good condition?
Definitely not dude. My 92 accord had alloys, and open lug nuts that were not closed end. Maybe this is just a thing for cars with steelies? None of my civic have capped lugnuts either. I don’t recall the Dakota, but again, it had alloys, so I’m pretty sure they were open ended. Same with the neon.
BTDT with my P38a Range Rover. Absolutely evil things, and I got rid of them with extreme prejudice for solid steel lugnuts.
Sheet-metal-capped lug nuts(because that isn’t chrome that’s splitting and falling off) are absolutely not put together that way to save a negligible amount of money on chroming the entire lug nut. Who told you that?
Capped lug nuts are made that way because it is much easier to drill and tap a lug nut all the way through, and then cap it, instead of drilling and tapping a blind hole in the lug nut without poking through the front. Nothing to do with chroming and everything to do with machining. Which should be obvious, since not all two piece lug nuts are chromed.
I’m trying to understand why drilling and tapping the blind hole would be more costly.
The drilling part would be cheaper, as you’re not drilling as far and won’t have to chamfer the other side of the hole.
Tapping would require the extra step of switching to a bottoming tap to finish the hole, but it’s hard to imagine that creating a stainless cap and press fitting it to the nut would be a cheaper solution.
I feel like the real purpose of these is to avoid unsightly rusty or chrome peeling nuts, while simultaneously avoiding the cost of full stainless fasteners.
I’ve seen the same thing on cheap barbecues, where grills are made of mild steel wrapped in stainless foil and lazer welded at the seams as opposed to solid stainless grills which are significantly more costly. Eventually, the cheap steel within swells and frees itself from it’s stainless sheath.
I agree with you. I would need to know the differential between the materials tho.
Thanks for the succinct explanation of these lug nuts.
The chroming process also involves a lot of really nasty chemicals so that’s another disadvantage.
I spent $20 to pre-emptively replace mine on my Focus ST, saving myself and mechanics future grief.
The ones I’ve seen aren’t actually chrome, they’re stainless steel, but I think they might have been chrome in the past. The less chrome, the better, especially where it was the old kind of chrome that looked best and that’s been outlawed anywhere even pretending to be civilized and the newer stuff that looks cheaper is still pretty nasty stuff.
A couple of my ST’s were starting to bloat after a couple years, so I tossed them for real nuts before they became an actual problem.
Reminds me of Alfa Romeos from the late ’90s and early 2000s where they were made of softer steel and painted over satin colours to match the look of wheels of the era. You’d go to torque them and just absolutely grind the edges down smooth. The paint would chip off on the edges and abraded the entire lugnut like sandpaper.
First thing I did when I bought my Camaro was replace those with the single piece chrome plated McGaurd ones. My mom’s Lincoln LS had them and witnessing my dad have to hammer on a smaller size socket just to remove them forever scorned me.
My Colorado had these. Replaced with proper lug nuts at the insistence of my mechanic as they were driving him mad too. Can’t remember the cost now, but I do recall the new ones weren’t cheap. Now I just realized the Volt has them too. Time to upgrade. Grrrr
One piece lug nuts can be had for around $20 a set on Amazon or at O’Reilly’s. If they weren’t cheap you overpaid.
It’s an issue on Airstream trailers too, and they already require a thin-walled socket to get the lugnuts off, so it becomes a real issue. It’s a commonly recommended to new owners on the forums to replace the factory lugnuts soon after purchase.
Summit Racing had some good quality lugnuts, i bought a set for my Wildcat.
I definitely dealt with these on my 2004 Jaguar XJ Vanden Plas. They were definitely Ford parts. I’m not sure if my 2006 version of the same had them or not; I never personally had to remove a wheel on that one.
I have a 2006 Ford that doesn’t have them, so maybe you lucked out too.
Yep, garbage. Went to Gorilla branded one-piece units on everything I have, they’re great quality.
My Volvo has them, changing tire on the side of the road the nut got stuck inside the socket and I tried to get it out to no dice, I got mad and decided to put the flat tire in the back – found I had a second lug wrench so the day was saved
100% accurate. My Ranger and Grand Cherokees came with this nonsense.
The Tire Rack winter wheel/tire package for the ’13 came with regular stainless lug nuts. I use those year round.
The Ranger is just going to stay stock till I can get rid of it without taking a haircut.
And the other GC is too new to be angry with.
If price is an issue I bet you can source them from a junkyard
I just mean I resent the entire truck and it needs to leave.
Chrysler used chrome-capped lug nuts on TJs, too. I replaced mine with one-piece stainless steel lug nuts I bought on Amazon. High school chemistry class tells me stainless + alloy + steel wheel studs is a good combination for electrolytic corrosion, so I smear anti-seize compound on the wheel studs when changing tires to reduce the opportunity for chemistry to ruin my day.
Of all the applications where a chrome-capped lug nut is hugely inappropriate…
Wow.
Testify!
I’ve learned the hard way that anti-seize compound is my friend. Now that I think of it, about 25% of the fasteners on the body and frame of my TJ are assembled with anti-seize.
Won’t the lubrication throw off the torque though?
Torque? You clearly mean pushing on the tire iron until you go “yep, that’s good”.
There’s a time and place for Gutentight/calibrated elbow but I’m not sure a lubed fastener that isn’t supposed to be lubed in the first place, on an alloy wheel, is that time or place.
Yes, using anti-seize affects the torque measurement. I back off about 10% of the recommended torque and have not:
I usually check the lug nuts on the TJ as part of a pre-wheeling inspection because it’s almost a quarter-century old.
Tons of folks(including me) run antiseize on lug nuts for alloy and steel wheels. Not a problem at all.
While I do have an entire collection of torque wrenches, I’ve never used one to torque wheelnuts/-bolts.
I just use torque sticks and an impact. The tq sticks are cheap, reliable and idiot-proof, even with my frequent wheel changes (between winter/summer wheels and track/street wheels on a bunch of cars) I’ve never over- or under-tightened them. And yes, I do use anti-seize with the winter wheels because Chicago winters and salty roads.
I watched a video from torque test channel on the sticks and they do seem accurate enough and worth it if you’re doing frequent wheel swaps.
Just stand on the iron 6″ form the nut, that’s about 100 foot pounds
I’ve heard that these are tough to get seated into the rim properly, especially for non-wrenchers. Make sure the rim is fully pressed back against the rotor.
I’m absolutely paranoid about this – I constantly press the wheel back using a hand and a knee as I’m doing the initial tightening while in the air.
These came on my Mustang. After 10 years they finally swelled to the point that I couldn’t get a normal wrench over a couple and bought a new set without stupid caps. Just one of those little annoyances that really shouldn’t happen.
Well that and the dealer installed lock nuts. But that is just the dealer trying to make a few extra bucks, not the manufacturer cheapening out.
Yeah, my Mustang came with the lock nuts too. I remember thinking “oh yeah, people might totally steal these stock satin alloys so good idea,” but 20+ years later, I no longer think that…
My original wheels were stolen out of my condos storage locker. Someone (the renters in unit 202) left the building key in their car and someone (acquaintances) “broke” in.
In the end I actually made money off the whole ordeal because I knew a guy at a dealer who hooked me up with a lower than list price on the rims and TPMS sensors. Totally not worth it for the amount of hassle it involved.
There are no words I can find to adequately express my anger when I have to deal with these. I use expletives… lots of them (I think it might be where my kids learned their first bad word) but that still doesn’t do it justice.
Nothing can turn a 30 second wheel removal into an afternoon from hell like these things.
They spin, they swell, they strait up rip right off. (I prefer the latter). They suck.
I they were designed so that if they “ripped” the remaining hex would be exactly one size smaller, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem.
Right on. I love the idea of a failure mode that results in a small but manageable annoyance, not a big mess of inoperability.
“We’re living in a society!”
These are the bane of existence for anyone who’s worked on JLR products, especially near ocean cities. Most people don’t realize it until they’re stranded on the side of the road trying to change the tire, or finally have time to do some routine maintenance on the weekend and getting stuck at the first step.
This makes the VAG plastic lugbolt caps that Torch (and I) hate so much actually seem like a good idea in comparison. I yeeted all of my plastic lugbolt caps into the abyss (the bottom drawer of my toolbox).
My Focus came with these, and the first time I (unknowingly) encountered their “failure mode,” I though I’d somehow rounded the corners by accident trying to remove it with the kinda imprecise wrench that comes with the car.
My fault, how could I be so stupid, etc. Bought a cool emergency lug nut removal socket and a (pricey!) replacement nut, and chalked it up to a lesson learned.
Second time, I was suspicious, and thanks to the interwebs, learned all about it. So ordered a full 4-wheel set of basic, “ugly” steel nuts and have never looked back. I actually now like the racer-functional look the bronze-ish color basic ones bring.
I have a Craftsman 13/16″ socket with one of these still stuck in it after probably 6 or 7 years. I’ve put it in a vice and tried everything to get it out but the aluminum casing is thoroughly wedged and it’s not budging. I keep it around hoping I’ll figure out a way to get it out. I guess drilling it out might work. It’s the only thing I haven’t tried.
Put it in a vise, take an appropriately sized drift and hammer and knock it out from the square hole side – should be no big deal.
I often wonder why when faced with an issue like this the first inclination is to blame the dealer, not the builder of the car? IOW, why throw your lug nuts thru the dealer’s window? throw them thru the MFR’s window – the guys who cheaped out and built the damn things in the first place. Or maybe the windows of the guys who actually make these stupid lug nuts?
I already did that. Several times. I’ve done it before. I was a dealer mechanic/technician for a very long time. It is stuck with the aluminum casing visibly twisted. I would destroy the socket before I knock the wheel nut out.
I actually talked to my local dealership about these – they told me they hate them too, and my guy even told me he’d replaced the ones on his Ford with regular steel ones.
haha, jokes on you, the underlying nut is hollow. So whatever you fit through the square whole just punches right through the cap and out the other side of the nut. Any purchase you can get on the inside lip with a tool (like a screw driver) just get’s destroyed.
You sound like a man whose wisdom has been gained through experience.
I tried all of these myself and learned the hard way. I eventually got it out, but only after I’d basically resigned myself to just buying a new socket.
The real wisdom I learned is to stop assuming I won’t spend my entire weekend doing basic repairs cause I’m going to encounter some unplanned shit that is gunna suuuuuck.
I think most of us have a pretty good understanding of that basic fact learned the hard way.
Take it to lowes, they’ll warranty it for you. I got a nut stuck in a 20mm socket I used to get of a stripped 21mm nut and they just laughed and told me to go get a new one. No issue at all.
do I really want to stop my project and drive up to Lowes?
No, that’s not the normal acceptable course of action, but if he’s got the lug stuck in the socket for who knows how long, it seems like a good one at this point.
If he does that, the lug nut wins.
Put the socket in the vise, open end up
Get a narrow chisel rated for metal
Use the chisel to cut relief lines in various spots around the inside
Grab one of the now-loose pieces with pliers and pull
The resulting gap should stop the offending piece from being wedged so tightly against the socket
Place the offending piece on the anvil part of the vise and beat the hell out of it as vengeance before throwing it away or recycling it
I bought a used Bronco Sport this summer and immediately binned these f’n lug nuts and put a set of McGard guaranteed for life not to rust nuts on it. I’ll be swapping between the winter and summer sets of wheels and tires for the next several years and fighting with these garbage parts is not on my list of things I’ll tolerate.
I’ve also put the socket in the vise, nut side down, and hammered it out through the drive hole in the socket using a smaller size extension or the widest screwdriver I could fit. Generally, they bloat in a kind of rounded way, so you can sometimes kind of work it in a circular pattern as there’s some space for it to move slightly with enough applied force.
Now you have a socket that fits the nuts already missing the cover, instead of trying to figure out what metric socket fits it close enough.
Thread it back on the lug (but not tight to the wheel or anything) heat up the socket with a torch, Then use a gear puller with the jaws behind the socket lip and the screwshaft through the socket drive hole. The puller screw shaft will pierce the chromed cap and then rest on the end of the lug. Eventually the socket will pull off. I’ve not had luck with this on thin-walled sockets that are needed for some recessed lug locations.
I have one of these as well. It’s on my “Wall of Shame” which is my trophy case of automotive failures. It rests with other items such as the camshaft that broke clean in half in an engine, a piston I installed brand new and had galled to the cylinder walls in less than 30 minutes because I rebuilt the engine completely wrong and blocked the main oil galleys, a spray can with half a grinder cutting disk sticking out the side because a disc came apart on me and punctured it and it exploded paint all over my shop. All those times are far more fun to remember than they were to experience.