I went to change the tire on my 2001 santafe,today and I cant get the tire and rim assy. off of the left rear wheel hub,it is frozen in place. yes I did remove all the nuts and tried gently tapping the rim. tks if you can help
You need more than gentle. Get a bigger hammer.
Gently??? We don't need no stinkin' "gently". Beat that sucker off. It's very common for wheels to corrode into place. It sometimes takes some serious beating to get them off. Once you get it off you can coat the hub and/or the inside surface of the wheel hub with a light coat of never-sezie or the likes to help eliminate this in the future.
That's a great idea backing off the nuts and then driving back and forth. However, it's not nearly as much fun as beating the snot out of it!!!!!! You have to take your frustrations out on something.
Tom
Yep, use a bigger hammer. This is another reason to rotate your tires. I rotate mine every 10,000 miles and have never had a wheel rust in place at that removal interval.
Matt
FWIW, I find that all I have to do is wack the tire with palm of my hand from the outside and it will pop the opposite side loose. A quick tug at the point where I hit it and it comes right off. Hyundai wheels fit the hub quite closely and corrosion forms where the dissimilar metals make contact. Brush off the oxidation and apply an anti-corrosive agent like Corrosion-X or anti-seize compound to the area where the hub inserts into the wheel.
I had an old car with the rear wheel stuck on so badly that I had tried a torch to heat the rim up, which usually works. In this case, it took a cold chisel and BFH to cut it loose. Had to actually cut throught the rim. Bye Bye wheel.
Tom
Generally a good whack with the hand works Brian, but it's not uncommon to find one so siezed on that it either takes the mondo BFH, or heat. I've encounterd wheels before that would not budge without heat. Just helped a friend with a Ford pickup that was like that. We beat on that with a huge BFH and finally I got the torches. It took a lot of heat but the wheel finally came free.
I don't doubt that at all. I change from summer to winter wheels every fall and back again every spring, so mine wheels never have more than a few months to seize together. I would imagine that if one didn't rotate their tires regularly and left them on for a couple of years or more, it would be a real bear to get them off.
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