PsychoPhil

(this is going to be a long one folks)

About two months ago I decided it was time to junk the 89 Jeep Cherokee parts car thats been sitting next to my garage slowly being stripped for the past three years. I needed the room for a 2000 Jeep Cherokee thats going to sit next to the garage and slowly be stripped for the next three years. I wanted to pull of the tires which were pretty much the last thing of value on the Jeep (Kuhmo Venture MTs). They have hardly any tread wear since they were put on just before the thing stopped running on a regular basis. Pulling these off will save me the $450 (plus install charges) that a new set would cost. Thus begins the fun that took several hours out of most of my weekends for the past two months.

The two rear tires came off without any trouble at all. You’d never know the things been sitting for years (well, with me moving the car a bit forward or back every once in a while to prevent flat spotting the tires). This gave me a false sense of confidence on how this would be a quick job. The front tires decided to be different. I was able to get 4 out of 5 lugs off the front passenger tire without much of a problem (After I hit Sears to pick up a new 18″ breaker bar of course). One nut was seized tight and wasn’t budging. In fact, with the new breaker bar, I managed to strip the nut. Move over the to driver side. I was only able to get two of three nuts off. I didn’t want to strip these as well so I decided to try a different strategy. The best way to losen a frozen nut is to heat it up (I was using Mapp gas with a plumbers nozzle (propane doesn’t put out enough heat)) then douse it with a penetrating oil (PB Blaster in this case). The fast cool-down with the oil causes the oil to be sucked into the threads breaking the seize. It works most of the time. Problem is, lugs are covered nuts and you can’t heat/spray the stud directly. Out comes the nail punch set. As shown below, I punched a hole in the top of each frozen lug (the top is really just a thin decorative cover anyway) so I could get to the stud inside. For a few days I made a point to spray a good amount of PB blaster in the holes so it could sit and soak.

(the above picture also shows one of the main problems I had to deal with. The stupid design of the factory Jeep wheels which have the lugs set VERY deep inside the aluminum wheel. No way to get to the nut except for head-on).

The next weekend, with the help of heat, I was able to break loose one lug on the driver side. I stripped the other two. Great. I’ve got three very well stripped lug nuts on my hands. Now what do I do? Well… by more tools of course. Off to Sears (I like Sears) to pick up a set of stripped wheel nut removal sockets. Similar to these sockets from SK, but a three socket set. They can also be used to remove locking wheel nuts when the key has been lost (which it always is). I also picked up a 36″ piece of black iron pipe (aka: cheater bar) to slip over the end of the breaker bar to gain a hell of a lot of leverage. This setup made quick work of the passender side lug nut. I was also able to remove one of the stuck lugs on the driver side. That leaves one lugnut to go. One single damned nut.

Using the stripped lug socket only managed to grind down the nut a bit more. Luckily I had a smaller size remover in the set. I placed that one on the nut and…. proceeded to grind down the nut even more. It didn’t even come close to moving.

So now I’m pretty screwed. The nut has been converted to a near perfect circle, and there was no damned way to get to the sides (normally you can use a cold chisel or a nut cracker on the side of the lug to break it off. See first picture for why thats not possible here). At this point the wife said ‘why don’t you just buy a new pair of tires’. Nice idea… but too late. This f*cking tire is coming off. I have to mantain my Jeepin honor. There’s no way I’m going to buy a new ‘part’ when there’s a perfectly good salvage part being held on by one single bolt. Ain’t going to happen.

Time to buy more tools. I like Sears. Unfortunately there’s no Sears near where I live so I was off to Home Depot.

Coming up: one three pound sledge, one 3/4″ cold chisel, one set of titanium drill bits and one power drill. I didn’t actually need the drill bits (or the drill) since I already have those, but they were at the hardware store and they were shiny. What more of a reason do you need?

Time to drill out the stud. It was really the only option I had left. Can’t remove the nut? Remove whatever the nut is holding on to. First this was to remove a bulk of the lug nut with the cold chisel and sledge. I was also hoping many wacks with a sledge would help loosen the nut. It didn’t. After I had removed the metal of the nut down to the top of the wheel stud, it was time to start drilling. Below it the result of about 3 hours of drilling (trust me when I say there’s a much larger pile of shavings on the ground).

(I should also probably mention at this point its a very good thing I wasn’t overly concerned with the looks of the wheel when I was done. This kind of removal WILL ding/scratch/generally screw up wheels).

I removed a large bulk of the wheel stud and it still wouldn’t budge. I even pushed the Jeep up and down the driveway a bit hoping to just snap it off. No go. I wasn’t able to drill anymore since the bits just kept getting jammed in the lump of metal that used to be a lug nut/wheel stud. I went to my absolute last resort miracle tool. The Dremel with a carbide cutting bit. I was a dentist performing a Jeep root canal for the next thirty minutes trying to grind away the last bits of stud without destroying the wheel itself.

Suddenly I heard a sound not entirely unlike a low string on an acoustic guitar breaking. Figuring ‘what the hell’, I lifted up the front end with the floor jack and wiggled the wheel. No movement. I grabbed the tire with hands and three and nine and gave a hard yank… and promptly feel on my ass with a tire in my hands. The F*CKER had come off!

As an added bonus, a car full of neighbors just happened to drive by as I was flipping off the Jeep while dancing the ‘f*ck you you f*cking lugnut I got tire off the f*cking Jeep’ dance.

One seriously unhappy wheel stud after it spent two days getting chiseled, drilled, dremeled and otherwise abused. That used to be a solid bolt. (notice the seriously out of place brake pad shim on the right? Not my brake job).

So, what we have here are some the the lug nuts I was working with. The three on the left are normal, albiet a bit old and worn, lug nuts. The two on the right are stripped lugs from the front passenger/driver wheels. And that little bastard in the middle is whats left off the last lug that just would not give up the frikking tire.

End result: I win.

Oh, and many beers were emptied. (der).

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