Not all lug bolts are junk. You might recall my story of a year or more
back relating to my 2013 F150 Supercrew. Someone removed all of the lug
nuts on one side of the truck except for the locking lug nuts. I guess
trying to steal the wheels and tires. They did not get the locking lugs
off but they took all of the lug nuts that they removed. They also tried
to get the spare tire as they pried out the locking doo-dad in the rear
bumper. Obviously amateurs who came unprepared or they would have either
had the right tools or would have looked for a vehicle without the
locking lug nuts. In any event, I drove the truck about 150 miles at
highway speeds with only 1 lug holding on each of the driver's side
wheels. They did not break thankfully.
Randy
On 24/10/2019 10:59 PM, Allan Streib via Mercedes wrote:
Peter Frederick via Mercedes <mercedes@okiebenz.com> writes:
Speaking of junk, a friend of mine had the wheel fall off of his 07 Pontiac G6
(same as a Chebbie Malibu, a car I destest) the other day. Lug bolts. all 5,
broke off. In the nearly 50 years I've been driving and paying attention to
cars, I've never seen all five lug bolts fail that way, in fact I have NEVER
seen a broken lug bolt that wasn't severely abused by using a 10ft cheater bar
or something similar.
Seems this isn't at all uncommon, all the parts places stock replacement lug
studs! How did we unlearn how to make decent lug studs?
Interesting you bring that up, as it's the current (and maybe last)
battle I'm engaged in with the Focus. Started with a flat tire on the
driver's side rear wheel. Boy drove it about a mile before realizing
something "didn't feel right," so tire ruined. Trying to loosen the lug
nuts (with the stock tire wrench), and one of the lug studs breaks
off. Get the other three off (barely) and put the donut on with the
three nuts to get home.
On the Focus, the lug studs are pressed into the brake drum. So tried to
remove the drum, thinking I'd press out the broken stud and press in a
new one ($1.99 part, that tells you something right there).
Youtube make it look easy: remove the center nut, pull the drum
off. Only it doesn't come off. Not even a little bit. With the help of a
wheel puller and a hammer I finally get it off, to find that the bearing
has come apart. The inner bearing race is still siezed to the spindle
shaft. So, bearing ruined, and drum effectively ruined, because the
bearing is integral to the drum. The spindle is galled where the bearing
was siezed. So I decide to replace the spindle as well. It's held on
with four bolts. In taking those out with a hand ratchet wrench with a
short (10") pipe on the handle, one of those bolts breaks.
So now, a flat tire results in needing a new drum, new lug nuts, new
spindle, and new spindle bolts. Not to mention the new tire. Only
consolation is that had the car gone to the shop I'd probably be looking
at a bill that would excede the value of the car.
I worked on several MBs over the years, all of them decades old, and
never broke a bolt with hand tools.
Allan
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