MG-Cars.info

Welcome to our Site for MG, Triumph and Austin-Healey Car Information.

Parts

MG parts spares and accessories are available for MG T Series (TA, MG TB, MG TC, MG TD, MG TF), Magnette, MGA, Twin cam, MGB, MGBGT, MGC, MGC GT, MG Midget, Sprite and other MG models from British car spares company LBCarCo.

MG MGF Technical - Shagged wheel nuts

Just a word of warning really :-/
On my £20,000 when-new car, Rover fitted some jolly tasteful but really rather naff "chrome effect" wheel nuts (note chrome "effect" not real chrome).
These look really posh and expensive, just what those cash-strapped mid-90s Rover "experts" wanted, but guess what?!
They're rubbish!
Try and change a wheel and the "chrome effect" on the wheel nut simply rounds off without budging an inch! And that was using a proper socket, not that laughable piece of recycled scaffolding Rover call a wheel brace.
So now I have a lovely freshly repainted, recently serviced car that needs the rear wheels removing to fit new tyres, but to do that means taking it to a professional demolition contractor to remove the wheel nuts and to do that means driving it there which I can't do because it needs to new rear tyres.

Rover (the late 90s lot) you are tw4ts for trying to make a car look expensive by the addition of cheap immitation stuff and then shooting us in the foot in the process. >:-/

Everyone else... How the hell do these wheel nuts come off now?
(PS I do not have an angle grinder, oxy-acetylene or a pitbull terrier)

Rant off (in case you were wondering...)
Cannonball Bob

Hi Bob, how's it hanging?

If the tyres are so bad that the car is/would be an MOT failure then, I believe, you can take it, by appointment, to a suitable repairer. Probably rubbish really but worth a try.

If the tyres are so bad that you cannot drive to a 'professional demolition contractor' then presumably they were too bad to use when you last drove it?

sarcasm off (in case you were wondering)

Good luck getting your nuts freed off.
JohnP

Had same problem myself but I found out about it whilst I was having my rear tyres replaced. Took the guys alot of effort and a large hammer to 'fit' the socket onto the nuts to allow the wheels to be removed. The outer 'caps' on the nuts just seemed to spin around but with a little brute force they got them off and luckily back on. The tyre centre said - 'they saw this alot on alot of Rovers not just MG cars' and seemed to have the 'technique' to remove them without damaging the wheel etc.

I replaced all the nuts - Did not want to have problems one wet night trying to change a tyre on the motorway - don't go to MG dealer as they wanted to charge me £9 or so a nut. I just laughed. Got them from B&G - £3 per nut but still expensive to replace all.

Keith
Keith Williams

Hi Bob,

Thanks for warning re-wheel nuts. I always use torque wrench to make sure they are not over tight.

Hope you sort out before red eye run :-)

don
don kimberley

How clever are you with a cold chisel and hammer ?? A chisel placed on the nut corner and a sharp hit should turn it.
Geoff F.
G. Farthing

Whad'appen'd wazz....
On Saturday I finished off a nearing-the-end-of-it's-life tyre at Castle Combe so drove home on the spare. Not ideal but a pass none the less, especially as I have a second set of wheels lurking in the garage for just such an occasion.
The idea (oh foolish me) was to reaplce the entire set with my spare set, then get both rears replaced off the car even though only one "really" needs it. The car's still driveable-ish, the front tyres are still quite fat, just got a spare and a semi-slick STUCK on the rear at the mo, (and numerous quasi-round wheel nuts, a couple of split sockets and a loosened rachet handle now too)
How did their advert used to go.....
"Relax....it's a Rover"
:-/
Cannonball Bob

...and because of the recess on those snazzy late 90s "Let's try and look expensive" alloys, the cold chisel idea is right out I'm afraid. It's like the Rover "experts" ("Ex" as "used to be", "Spurt" as in "Drip under pressure") wanted it to be the world's most useless bit of automotive design...assuming it actually underwent a process of design and wasn't some last minute Friday afternoon job by the work experience lad before he went back to art college?
Cannonball Bob

Have you asked your local dealer ?
Mine got the nut off and replaced it for free. A large hammer and an under-size socket should move it.
Just under that 'late-90s chrome effect' cover is a nut made from red leicester cheese. Jap Bikes are notorious for using fasteners made from cheese so perhaps it was Honda technology ?
Steve

Bob, I've suffered from exactly the same problem as you with the wheel nuts - using the cheap and nasty wheel brace supplied with the car. Don't use that any more following the experience - I keep a torque wrench and socket in the car at all times now!

I honestly didn't know how to proceed, but I had to get the wheel off - so in the end I gave up and contacted the AA!!! The solution is actually very simple- although completely destructive.

The soft alloy covers a conventional wheel nut. So the solution for removing the wheel nut when it's rounded off is to take an old screw driver and hammer (satisfying violence bit) and rip off the alloy covering to expose the wheel nut underneath.

Esay peasy. Since then I've had to destroy one further wheel nut in this way. Very annoying.

Been trying to source a solid alloy wheel nut ever since (the Metro 6R4 nuts are, I'm told, suitable).
Rob Bell

On my car I simply peeled the chrome cover off all the nuts when I had them off the car and use an 18mm socket instead of the 19mm one that is normally used.Then again I am not concerned that they do not look shiny and chromed. Any tyre shop should have proper chrome plated replacements available second hand for next to nothing as they are used on all sorts of Jap cars.
d mottram



I got a set of stainless steel nuts from Mike Satur at Silverstone and they work .I think I got The last one at the stall but he said they had a stock at his workshop
a friend

Bob

Have you thought about using a self-adjusting wrench (not a stilson) that tightens the more force is applied? I've also seen sockets & spanners that grip the centre of the hex, not the corners.

Failing that, use a nut splitter?
Adrian

Having sussed late nineties Rover's evil plot to knacker us all up with the wheel nuts. I have been very very careful when removing them, and when the car goes for tres I take off the wheel myself at home and take the wheels into a tame tyre place I know

... so far so good
Neil

He he he! <<<<evil laugh

Have borrowed an impact socket and two foot (and a bit) torque bar from the vehicle workshops here at Thunderbird HQ.
Needless to say said socket is normally used for removing armour plate and stuff from T2 and appears to be hewn from case hardened granite or something, then dipped in depleted uranium for added effect.
Torque bar looks sturdy enough for Pavarotti to go pole-vaulting.

Take that! Evil late 90s Rover engineers!

Also phoning MS later to buy some wheel nuts manufactured specifically with menfolk in mind. Pity Rover never thought of that when they built the damn thing! :-/
Cannonball Bob

Sorry you are having so many problems in getting your nuts off. I can well imagine the frustration!
Patrick Beet

Might be a good time for everybody to get a new set.

Confound the evil Rover engineer's evil plan for world domination and avoid radiation sickness from the Manhattan Project wheel nut remover.

Neil

>Also phoning MS later to buy some wheel nuts manufactured specifically with menfolk in mind. Pity Rover never thought of that when they built the damn thing! :-/ <

Bob - it has been said that the MGF is a 'girly car' perhaps it was the Rover design engineers that put the rumour around:-)

Ted
Ted Newman

Bob,
Trust you have the 18mm socket to use after removing chrome covers.

The cold chisel does work albeit I did it on somebody elses MGF. A technique learnt in order to restore a 1937 Austin 7 Chummy in the mid sixties. Ted, did'nt you learn to do it during your apprenticeship ??

>numerous quasi-round wheelnuts<. You say that you carried on after you had k'ed the first. 1st mistake.

Adrian's >grip on the centre of the hex< are not available among "the agricultural engineers tools" at Halfords or your normal Motorspares Shop. They are available from Snap-On in their Flank-Drive Range. www.snap-on.co.uk
Geoff F.
G. Farthing

The secret of removing the wheel nuts without damage is to avoid like the plague all multifit type sockets and only use a proper full hexagonal wheel-nut socket.

I discovered this after damaging a nut the first time I removed a wheel. Fortunately the penny dropped quickly and I got the rest off without problem.

Andy
Andrew Dear

"You say that you carried on after you had k'ed the first. 1st mistake"

Well they all got pretty chewed up, even the ones that came off. Anyway, the idea was to get off what I could so I knew where I stood when it came to hammering an old socket on to what may have possibly turned out to be only one rounded "chrome effect" nut.
As it stands they're all pretty much past it, but you know that socket and handle I borrowed from work? Looks like Geoff Hoon may be asking Gordon Brown to buy him a new one, I seem to have "lost" the one I borrowed ;-)
Cannonball Bob

>Ted, did'nt you learn to do it during your apprenticeship ??<

They only allowed us copper hammers:-)

Seriously yes the cold chisel can work and of course failing that a nut splitter will also work BUT the problem with the wheel nuts is lack of working space.

Lot of good advice but each case is different - I found that by forcing on a slightly smaller socket, then by parking the car close to a wall I could wedge the the tommy bar in place and managed to free the one nut that had lost its nice square corners.

Ted
Ted Newman

And for many days a dark cloud had lain over the tarmac, a plague cast many years before by the evil goddess Allegro across the land that was Longbridge, and lo it caused hexagons to turn to circles and sockets to be rent in two causing much anger among the people.
But there came forth a chosen one, and they called him Bob and he bore the gleaming staff of Snap-On and the mighty socket of Thor, hewn by the gods from some extremely hard steel or something.
And lo, the cursed wheel nuts that had been placed as rocks by the infidels of Rover were shattered with a mighty clap of thunder.

And they were no more.
Cannonball Bob

"the one nut that had lost its nice square corners."

And Bob thence queried the disciple Ted saying "But if it had square corners it'd be surely a square. The nut of a wheel has sides that number six so it should really have nice hexagonal corners?".

And Bob did wink so.
Cannonball Bob

I should have known that Bob would have to query something that I have said!

I was speaking (or should that be writing) in terms of the edges sharpness rather than their angles in degrees.

Surely if the corners are hexagonal that means the corners each have six sides so that makes the nuts polyagonal - what ever a 36 sided angle is.

Ted
Ted Newman

Bob,

Stop sniffing aviation fuel or I'll be forced to report you to your superior officer. ;-)


Ted,

and you've just proved that you have far too much time on your hands these days but that's no excuse for encouraging Bob! ;-)
Paul Lathwell

And having read this tale of woe do pity ye the drivers truly costly shiny silver chariots produced by cunning sorcerers known to the world as Mercedes & Benz, who must weild a prying bar of the strongest metal alloy in order to loosen their wheels & free their nuts! (No joke)

;-) Bob, you truly inspired me!
Sally

This thread just reminded me - What sort of car did Moses drive?

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...The roar of his triumph was heard throughout Israel...


(Gets coat)
Mike Hall

...and wasn't Jesus' arrival anounced by some singing Angel in a Herald?
Adrian

Sally in Manchester is absolutlely right

MB have a number of official issues with wheel nuts
notably if you have a puncture and use the space saving spare you have to also use the different nuts supplied in a small box somewhere in the boot or else all hell breaks loose with the hubs and hub carriers... so your average Merc driver my boy gets his wheel outta the boot and ...it dont work oy oy oy!!

Tuetonic excellence for you!


Neil

I suspect you used a 12-point socket instead of the 6 point supplied. Agreed the standard wheel brace is cack, but using a proper 6-point socket will work fine, and won't chew up the stainless steel cover on the nut.
Steve

This thread was discussed between 01/08/2004 and 09/08/2004

MG MGF Technical index

This thread is from the archives. Join the live MG MGF Technical BBS now