lug nuts won't come off wheel
 

I went to rotate my tires today and I successfully loosened the lug nuts on 3 wheels. The rear right tire has 3 lug nuts on it that won't loosen.

I could loosen them slightly but the more I turned, the tighter they got.....neither I or my dad could put enough force into them to get them off. They literally got tighter the harder we tried to loosen them. :banghead:

Why would they tighten when being loosened? What should I do? For some reason I have a feeling this might turn out to be costly.

Any input on this would be appreciated before I take it down to the dealer. :help:

It could be that your studs are about to break. This happened to me about 8 months ago. I couldn't take off one lug so I put some muscle into it and the stud broke. I went to Sears and they wanted $45 dollars to change it out. I bought a new stud for a few dollars and got info from someone here as to how to go about fixing it.

Did you put the lugs back on yourself or did the shop do it the last time? You could try a breaker bar...

ur probably gonna have to break them off.... then get new ones form pepboys or autozone...

Do u have access to a air impact wrench? I would try this tool before brute forcing them off.

I bought my tires at discount tire company and bought the unlimited warranty on alignment and rotation. I just noticed recently that the front left tire went bald on both sides and all the other tires are doing okay(maybe 4-5 months left), which makes me believe they did a crappy alignment job and while rotating my tires yesterday, 3 lug nuts wont come off. I'm definitely not taking my car there any more.

I do not have access to an air impact wrench so I'm going to try the breaker bar in a little bit, after I go pick up some new lug studs and bolts. I'm going to try and replace these studs my self, hopefully they pop out as expected because I don't feel like hammering the hub too hard.

my lugnuts were frozen too. tried everything including a breaker bar. went to walmart and paid $20 for them to remove my old wheels and install new ones. air tools are nice.

I drove my car today for the first time since I tried pulling the lug nuts off and now I am getting a squeaking noise from that wheel....when the car is rolling and breaking. I was actually on my way to autozone to pick up new lug nuts and studs when I started to notice this squealing noise coming from that rear side of the car. Could I have possibly pulled too hard and messed something up? possibly bent the hub?

take it back to them and make them take it off. This is what happens when the dumbass at discount tires uses the impact wrench to put the lug back on rather than starting them by hand. They cross threaded them most likely. (either that or way way overtightened them, which they did to me once)
If you loosened the lugs and could not tighten them back you need to get it fixed now. And no, you could not have...bent the hub. Imagine the abuse it gets from the road, you could not have come close to that. You may just have loose lugs now and the wheel is wobling.

I would get 3 studs just in case. Than I would take a breaker bar, go to home depot and buy a 1" dia. pipe about 18" long. The pipe with the breaker bar can take off the toughest of bolts. I've been able to get bolts off better than an impact gun.

there is your problem... unfortunately.

My advice to you is to not to use a breaker bar at this point. With a breaker bar you are not only turning the studs but also forcing the hub downward/upwad with a lot of force. Go to a shop and have them use an impact gun to see if it works. Impact guns only spins but will not force your hub downward/upward, thus any damage will be just be to the stud/nut but not the hub. Some shops might even have a 1 inch impact gun if needs to be. If all else fails then use a center punch and hit the middle of the lug nut. Then use a small drill bit to start drilling at the indent. Drill about as deep as the lug nut. Then use progressively larger drill bits until the nut falls off. After you get your wheel off then use a punch or a press to press the broken stud out.

with the squeeling, sounds like either the hub is bad or bent, or something in there (the shield) is rubbing the rotor.

good luck with getting the lugs out.....you may want to try some PB blaster or something in there prior to air-tooling them out

worse case, you have to get them drilled out, and since they were most likely cross threaded, you'll need a new hub

I took care of it today and 3d Man was correct. The nuts had loosened and then froze, thus creating a squealing and clunking/wobbling sound.

I went down to autozone and picked up 4 lug nuts and studs, 2 acorns and 2 open ended nuts, cause that is all they had. I got home....put the back rear on a jack.....put a block of plywood behind my front tire and removed the parking brake so the caliper would come off....put a breaker bar on the nut and put a 3 foot pipe onto that.....broke those sob's off. It turned out to be 4 frozen nuts, ....thankfully....which is exactly what I bought.........pulled the wheel off....unloosened the caliper bolts.....14mm.....lightly hammered the caliper off.....took off the brake pads on each side......unloosened the torque member bolts......17mm.......pulled it off and then pulled the rotor off. Then with 4 broken studs looking at right at me.....I hammered them *****3s out. They popped right out the other side and will not be missed.:happyface

I then inserted the new lug stud through the back....inserted 4 washers on the other side and put a lug nut on top of the washers.....I then used a crow bar through the studs to create some back pressure and began torquing the nuts to pull the studs through....this was the most grueling part because it took alot of force to pull them through. After the studs were in place....removed the washers...put the rotor back on....put the torque member back on....put the brake pads in there rightful position.....squeezed them together and put the caliper back on and screwed it in. Put the wheel on ...put the nuts back on....drove it around and no more clunking or squealing.:ben:
The dealer had quoted me $90 labor and $3.52 for a single lug nut and $6.45 for a single lug stud( :Prinz: the dealer), not that I expected them to be cheap, I was just curious to hear their price and I was tempted to pay to have this done. I am so happy that I didn't now because this turned out to be really easy.

thanks for the advice from all of you.:doublethu

Glad to see things worked out. And you just saved a bunch of money by switching to Geico.

Nice. Now put some copper anti-seize on the threads, and get a $30 torque wrench.

Every time your car comes back from any shop or dealer, back off and retighten each lugnut on the car to 80ft-lb. That should prevent this from happening in the future.

As for the bad tire wear, a loose set of lugs are probably the cause. But I still want to take this opportunity to soapbox about the difference between a joe blow shop alignment and an alignment done properly. I started using the alignment shop recommended by the local autocross racers, and the difference is immense.

Dave

Thanks....I was actually wondering about that......that is what I'll do next.....no need to be wasting tires one at a time.