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| Arizona Rough Riders Safety Article: Lug Nuts |
This article submitted by: Ken Blaisdell
Check your lug nuts. Usually, the idea behind this simple statement is to make sure they’re all tight, but after a recent trip to Discount Tire, the opposite problem arose. After picking up the Jeep, I wanted to swap the spare onto the left rear, but found the lug nuts to be much tighter than they should have been. A good sized cross-type lug wrench broke them free, but the threads in two of the five nuts had galled with the studs. (For those unfamiliar with "galling of threads", it happens when a male and female thread go together with so much force and so much friction and no lubrication, that they actually fuse together, just like welding.) One of the nuts was able to be removed by just cranking hard on it the whole way off. Of course both the stud and the nut were ruined beyond repair at that point.
The other nut started coming off, but then simply stripped, so that it turned, but would not come off any further (or even go back on for that matter). It took a right-angle grinder to grind two sides off of the nut so it could be split open, and pried off the stud (see photo). This could have been a very serious problem out on the trail with a flat tire. Not many of us carry grinders with us (or generators to power them).
After finding two out of five nuts on one wheel to be galled, I checked the rest of them. I found two more that galled while taking them off. One was minor enough that the stud could be repaired (the nut was trash), but the other one froze solid. By really leaning on the lug wrench, I was able to twist the lug off. That’s actually a good thing! Replacing the stud is fairly easy if you can get the wheel off.
So this month’s safety suggestion is this: One at a time, remove each lug nut, put a dab of anti-seize compound on the stud, and put the nut back on. You won’t even have to jack up the vehicle to do it. Its best to torque the nuts to the factory specs, to avoid over or under tightening. The spec for a CJ, YJ, and TJ is 85 ft/lbs. Other vehicles with a different thread size than the ½-20 studs on the Jeeps, may be different. Check your owner’s manual.
(By the way, anti-seize compound is better than WD-40, oil, or even grease, because it contains graphite, and won’t evaporate or bake away because of the heat.)
While we’re on the subject of checking lug nuts…apparently, the shop lost two of the nuts while they were balancing the tires, and replaced them with two new ones. The problem is that the new ones were 13/16" hex, while all the rest on the vehicle were ¾" hex. No real problem when you have a lug wrench with four different hex sizes, but the factory wrench is ¾", and that’s it. So if the vehicle owner had only the factory wrench to work with, they wouldn’t be able to change that tire. So here’s tip number two: Make sure you have a wrench that will fit your lug nuts. Seems obvious, but if your vehicle’s been in the shop, who knows what surprises may await you.
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