Disco1 Wheel Nuts

It's an R-reg with alloy wheels.

I've spent much of today trying to get a tyre repaired. The vehicle came with locking wheel nuts, which have always been hard on the adapters (the metal keyed thing, not the plastic taker-offer), which start to disintegrate as torque is applied. So we have 3 broken adapters, the wheel still on the car, and a trip to the not very local LR specialist who used a big hammer, a lot of grunt and a huge lever to encourage the worst of them off.

We now no longer have locking wheel nuts and I have a great sense of relief.

What we do have is a one-size wheel brace that fits all the nuts reasonably well, but with some hammering needed on some. The nuts are not all the same. Some are the size of the wheel brace socket, but many have a sort of push on thin "tin" adapter to bring them up to about the correct size.

The spare wheel nuts are different in that the thread goes all the way through to allow the longer studs to go through. They seemed not to have the adapter and so need a different socket. One of the nuts on one front wheel seems to be a spare wheel one, but with a slightly different pressed tin size adapter which unlike all the others seems to be rusting.

What should the wheel nuts be like? Solid or with little leave-on covers? Should the wheel brace need a bit of a hammer-on to get it on to some nuts and not others? Has something gone metric and do I have half of one size, half another?

Googling reveals a fair amount of irritation with Disco2 nuts, not much about Disco 1.

Reply to
Bill
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mine's a P reg, has alloy wheels, I had the same issue as you, so replaced the locking nuts with normal ones, exaclty like these ebay item 370418291260 they all have the thin tin cover. I don't know about the spare, mine is not mounted. Andrew

Reply to
Andrew T.

Umm ... sounds as though they've been on a bit too tight! Incidentally are these the axial peg-in-hole design or the peg sitting in a recess on the outside diameter?

I can understand that.

I think you'll find that the spare wheel one has a full 27mm across flats (A/F) dimension and this will match the normal road wheel ones where the "tin" bit is installed.

There's also the possibility that the grade of steel used for the spare wheel nut is not up to the specification of that for road wheel nuts, although such a practice would be a bit risky for manufacturers.

There are aftermarket ones around which could differ in all sorts of ways. The "tin" bit on genuine nuts is stainless.

The later "tin" capped road wheel nuts have a through drilled hole like the spare wheel nut but is only tapped part way.

Could be either. Early nuts (NRC7415) were solid and had a full 27mm A/F dimension. The ones with the "tin" cosmetic bit are the later version (ANR2763MMM) giving the 27mm A/F dimension when the "tin" bit is installed. I don't have a capped nut with the cap missing to measure but I'd expect around 26mm A/F.

The later nuts (ANR2763MMM) also have an additional conical seat for use when a steel spare rim is provided.

No .... but if the "tin" bit has been abused .... or fitted to early nuts that were not intended to take them .... or it's an aftermarket God knows what.

The stainless ("tin") caps used to be available as spares.

Forget this possibility. It doesn't exist.

Reply to
Dougal

Thanks for the replies.

It only took 2 days and 60 miles of driving between ATS and the LR specialist to get all the wheel nuts off and the tyre sorted. Having got the locking nut free, I shouldn't have assumed that ATS would be able to get the non-locking nuts off.

I now need to go round the other wheels and check that all the nuts are within my capabilities. Maybe a bit of copperease here and there.

I am told that the reason I have to hammer the brace on to some of the capped nuts is that the actual nut underneath can rust slightly and expand the cap.

The locking nuts I had were ones with two grooves and a pin all on the outer circumference. The "keys" all had quite thin metal where the pins/grooves were, and that's where they broke as they were forced on.

Reply to
Bill

Yes, mine is starting to split where the pin makes the wall of the socket rather thin. Putting the summer tyres on last week I had one rather tight locking nut and had to take a lump hammer to the socket to get it back into shape.

When using the locking nut socket ensure that you are only applying torque to the socket, no force in any other direction, like you can easyly do with a short extension on socket wrench. The supplied brace will put some sideways stress on the socket as well.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

On or around Mon, 11 Apr 2011 20:59:44 +0100, Bill enlightened us thusly:

I cna tell you why the problems with the tin-hat nuts... the nut inside has corroded slightly, causing the tin hat to distort. This happens to most such nuts eventually.

There are better locking ones, if you want: they have an uneven pattern of spline rather than the 2 grooves and 2 pins to fit 'em. Although the real answer to locking nuts (and the others) is to put some copper grease on the threads and not to over-tighten the locking ones.

I've found that the solution to the tight tin-hat nuts is as follows: take off the nut, place it on a solid flat metal surface (aka anvil), on one of it's flats. Hit the opposite (i.e. top) flat with a big hammer, carefully so you hit it on the flat. turn it round 60 degrees, and repeat. After you've pounded on all 6 flats, you should find that they're not bowed out of shape any more, and the wheel spanner fits.

The more expensive solution is to replace them with new ones. One thing you do need is the correct alloy-type nuts, or they won't be safe.

They're 27mm, BTW. One of the best tools I've had for the job is a 27mm AF injector socket (originally bought for its intended purpose of undoing M24 injetcors) but it's a good, deep, single hex socket and very good for LR wheelnuts, with the addition of a good long swivel handle.

Reply to
Austin Shackles

Series/Defender wheel nuts should be tightened top 75/85 ft/lb, and Discovery alloys to 96 ft/lb. If you don't have a torque wrench, use the supplied stubby little wrench supplied with the vehicle to tighten

- the size of those is no accident, they are deliberately designed to prevent over-tightening!

Reply to
beamendslrs

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