Diagnosed with swollen nuts

[anonymous-user]

Yep got a call Tuesday saying I had swollen nuts, 7 of them in fact.

I'd never even heard of such a thing. The guy at the garage explained that as they are alloy wheel nuts and 7 had swollen then they would be difficult to remove at the side of the road and did I want new ones fittings.

I declined the offer as I'm used to applying a lot of force etc to get seized wheel nuts off.

Question; Is this actually a thing? What does it mean by swollen? Is it simply slightly corroded?

[stevieturbo]

No pictures ?

Although all I can say....is I would never fit wheel nuts made from aluminium. Any I have seen, have always been a disaster.

[Mogul]

Do your nuts have chrome caps on them? Ford, Landrover, Merc. etc?

Water between the steel part and the cap can lead to corrosion forcing the chrome cap to expand making it had to get your usual 17mm(?) wheel wrench on when you need it.

Move to Arizona for a permanent fix…

[Krikkit]

Replace them - the problem won't be the torque, it'll be getting a socket over them at all - 17mm will be too tight, 18mm too big.

[bucksmanuk]

stevieturbo said:

No pictures ?

Although all I can say....is I would never fit wheel nuts made from aluminium. Any I have seen, have always been a disaster.

^^^ this
its all explained in here

[anonymous-user]

Thanks all. I had assumed the issue was corrosion causing the nuts to seize on.

Hadn’t considered my swollen nuts would cause a swollen head thus the spanner no longer fitting.

I wondered how he knew there were 7 when he’d only had to remove one wheel.

[guyvert1]

+1 for thread title

[G600]

MikeStroud said:

I wondered how he knew there were 7 when he’d only had to remove one wheel.

Probably found one and checked the rest.

It must be reasonably common as you can get .5mm oversize sockets to remove them.