OT: Bugger

Dervy, fork out £20-£30 at your local halfords and get a 1/2" drive breaker bar and the appropriate black impact socket. Best money you'll ever spend as far as ease of removing overtightened wheel nuts.

Peter

Breaker bar and socket. It's at least as long as anything Kwik Fit have...

But don't use it to tighten the nuts afterwards.

The poor mans technique for "those difficult bolts" is to get a good torque wrench or similarly long bar and use that. If it still won't shift, a scaffold pole six feet long will fit over the end of the torque wrench and add tonnes of force.

If it still won't shift, jack up the car, position the scaffolding so that it is resting on the ground, and lower the car from the jack so that the weight of the car goes onto the scaffold pole.

Next step, jack the car up, support it on a teetering pile of bricks, position the scaffold pole and then put a rope round the pile of bricks so you can retire to a safe distance before toppling them and having the car fall some distance onto the end of the scaffold pole with a jolt.

Finally, realise that the nut actually undoes the other way after all and start saving up for a replacement hub. :)

ROFL! ;)

Just jump on the wheel brace, thats what I do :-)

In article , snipped-for-privacy@WithThanks.com spouted forth into uk.rec.cars.modifications...

Agreed on that, it's been great, even with standard sockets.

I've used it slacken off brake callipers with 20 years sitting on them,

10 year old transmission drain plugs, everything loosened really really, with little effort, and no signs of rounding.

fantastic piece of kit, and the professional seies is lifetime warrentied.

Well, when undoing one of the caliper bolts on the Audi (n/s IIRC) a socket I was using started to round it off. I tried to find a whitworth equivalent that was a tiny bit smaller (which had worked a treat in another situation), and then gave up and called a mobile mechanic to come around and chisel it off as I'm completely useless at doing that. One guy (a specialist in German marques) asked if I'd used an impact socket. I ask are they called that because you hammer them on (!!), and he told me they're basically a stronger type of socket, usually in black, and have a hex-shaped grip rather than 12-sided or whatever it is. Then it clicked that I actually had a couple of impact sockets (17 and 19mm), and went and used one of those, and the bolt loosened straight away, and that was after I'd already done a fair amount of rounding-off!! Needless to say I replaced the caliper bolts.

Yep, I'd definitely only ever use impact sockets for anything that shows even a hint of rounding with standard sockets though.

Peter

why get all smelly when you could have driven about with only 3 wheel nuts on :) (i know, but i'm just waiting for someone else to say it :) )

i don't have a problem with wheel nuts being too tight i simply use the 3/4 drive torque wrench (you know, the big 43 inch long bugger) and if they don't come off, they normmaly need a new studd after the other ones broken off :)

Hehehehe - but it was my wedding ring! :-/

and there i was thinking you were getting into a flap about losing a wheel nut :) you will have to enlighten me further in a few weeks time :)