For the last 2 years I've been driving my car around on a set of ghetto low rider wheels. You know the type... chrome reverse with 80 gold spokes and tribal caps. I never liked them but the price fit my budget. A couple of weeks ago I scored some American Racing chrome smoothies and baby moons so I though I'd get an idea how they'd look. I decided to remove the rear driver's side wheel and stick the new up there to see. I found one of the lug bolts and it's nut were stripped so I bought 5 new bolts and 5 new nuts and installed them. Took the car to the tire shop the next day to get the rubber switched to the new rims. Everything was cool until this morning. On the way to work the car starting to feel a bit squirrelly like a mushy tire on the p***enger side.Tires were fine but I found all the lugs on the driver's side were loose. The fronts 2 full turns, the rears were only on 2 turns finger tight. I cinched them down again and proceeded on my way to work (5 miles). Coming back from lunch today I hear this clunk, clunk, clunking going on. Once again the rear lugs on the driver's side are backed almost all the way off. Any idea what can cause the lugs to back off every 8 miles? Should I use lock***e? I've given some thought to drilling the bolts for cotter pins but would rather not. Now it looks as though all the lug bolts are beat up and the threads galled. Maybe the tire dealer didn't get them tight enough initially but they are going to have to be replaced again.
Sounds like the taper of the lugnut fits too far into the wheel, essentially bottoming out to the drum before seating against the wheel......
Another thing...I remember reading back when those oxcart looking white flat spoked pickup truck wheels were popular, it was said that lugs continually came loose on the things because they were completely flat and had no compressible raised area around the lugs to compress and load the nut--these wheels used nomal conical nuts, not mag style, and were purely flat flame cut.
sound to me like the rivets on the drums are holding the wheels up enought off of the hub to cause the wheels to loosen. if your car has these, the need to be removed. i ran into this problem several times. loose the rivets, make sure to torq the wheels, and you should be done.
The Jalopy Journal
