Physics Majors Please Respond

use a breaker bar.... otherwise spray some WD-40????

Antony

 

You may have a little corrosion from steel studs and alloy wheels. The breaker bar will either get it off or break the stud. If it breaks the stud, you'll need to press a new one in.

Good luck.

 

You need some lube.

So do the nuts.

 

Righty Tightie, Lefty Loosie?

 

Seriously, though, do you have a compressor? Buy an air impact wrench.

 

If the wheel has to come off, the wheel has to come off....so whether it breaks or not it will just have to be dealt with. I very much doubt it'll break, it's just on real tight, pneumatic tools tend to do that!!!!

You have 2 choices...

1) Take it to a tire place and let them run through with a pneumatic wrench to soften them up...then have them put them on to proper torque specs

2) Get that pipe you were talking about and slip it over the wrench...apply reasonable pressure (load it up) and then jump on it with one quick jarring motion (sudden smack of power)....that'll 97% do the trick. I believe it's called a "breaker bar" when you use a pipe like that.

Good luck K!

 

Yes.

 

Soak some liquid wrench on there/wd40 and let it soak in for 15 minutes. Test it again, if it still won't budge, spray some more on there and let it soak for 15 minutes to a half hour and try again.

 

Try tightening it first. Just a bit. Then try loosening it.

If this does not work, I suspect the nut has seized on the stud, and any force you apply will go to twisting the stud (eventually breaking it) rather than towards unscrewing the lug nut. I suggest going to a mechanic and using the air tool. That will break it loose. In physics terms, it's called an impulse force, and nothing applies it better than an air ratchet.

 

I would have suggested taping an M-80 to it and blowing the thing off, but I think you have already gotten some good enough advice.

 

I dunno, put it in a pipe.

 

When I bought my Jag I changed the brakes.

I couldn't get the lugs off. The impact wrench with moderate air pressure didn't get them off and I didn't want to snap the heads off by turning it up.

I sprayed them down as best I could with wd-40. After a couple of hours I took a 4 foot section of steel square tubing and used it on the end of my socket wrench. I kept applying pressure slowly and eventually I got them off. They were full of rust.

The wheels were also forzen to the car. I had to spin them slowly while hitting the tire with a mallet.

I had never had anything like this before.

 

Maybe this is why I don't have any toys from my childhood

 

Unless it's some of the early sixties cars like a Pontiac Tempest. They have LEFT hand thread lug nuts on the LEFT hand side of the car. RIGHTY loosey in that instance. Incredibly enough, the Auto Zone actually had LEFT hand lug nuts in stock. So there must be quite a few old cars out there that used them. Their was some sort of theory that said that left hand side lug nuts had to be opposite thread to the right hand side. That theory must have died off in later years.

 

With a decent 1/2" drive breaker bar like this, and a piece of pipe over the end of it, you can probably generate about 200 ft/lbs of torque. Use a 6-point socket if possible, and don't put an extension between the socket and the breaker bar. If it won't come loose with that much torque, it must be seriously stuck, and might need heating with a torch (very carefully!).

I'd suggest taking it to your nearest truck stop that does tire work, where they would have a 3/4" drive setup, or even 1" drive. That should break it loose even if someone put loctite on the threads.
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Do not use a cheater pipe with a ratchet!!! Also do not jump on it The only thing you will break is the teeth inside of the ratchet.

Go purchase a 3/4" drive braker bar with a 3/4" to 1/2" drive step down adaptor. This will give you enough leverage to brake the nuts loose.

 

I may be remembering high school math incorrectly, but if the breaker bar setup is approximately three feet long (like what the pic appears to be), then a 200# person standing on the end of it will generate 600 foot-pounds of torque at the nut.

I would use a pneumatic ratchet if one is available - rather than twisting the nut like the breaker bar would, a pneumatic ratchet more-or-less hammers the nut in a circular motion, little bit by little bit, fractions of an inch at a time. It's nowhere nearly as potentially destructive as applying brute force torque.

Good luck...
Patrick W. Heinske -- [email protected]

 

Not true. with air tools you cannot control the torque that is being applied. Also if there is corrosion or rust on the fastener the heat from the friction can get hot enough to friction weld the 2 metals together.

Using hand tools you can control the amount of force being applied and get a feed back of how the fastener is lossening up on you. Being a technician for well over 20 years, Service manager and Mechanics instructor i have seen more fasteners damaged by air tools than i care to admit too.