legacycentral bbs

any suggestions as how to take off old stuck wheels? I don't think the wheels have been off this car for years, tried wd-40, hitting them, pulling them, hitting them from the back.. etc. This is incredibly frustrating, as I can't change the brake pads and the car has barely any pad left

PB Blast 'em, let 'em sit for about 20 minutes then try hitting and pulling them again.

My buddy ran into the same problem with a BMW. He was changing her tire (she got a flat, a friends friend, blah blah blah), and the wheel would NOT come off, no matter what.

I don't know what happened, he never told me the rest of the story.

I'd say do what Matt said. Try not to damage the wheel by hitting it though.

A good idea, is to rotate tires often as to keep things free from locking. Also, clean the rotor hats, and the wheel mounting surface to help keep things from locking up. Mounting a dirty wheel to a surface rusted hat, will definately cause it to lock on there.

legacy92ej22t wrote:PB Blast 'em, let 'em sit for about 20 minutes then try hitting and pulling them again.

If you do this be sure to hose the rotor off with brake cleaner. PB and a fiction disk are not a good combo.

On my old camaro I would have to safely jack up the car. Put the car in gear and let the tires spin (at idle) and slam on the brake with the lugs loose. I would go from D...slam...R...Slam. This would use the weight of the tire to break it loose. If you have AWD have all tires off the ground.

This might sound stupid -- and maybe it is -- but you can sometimes get frozen wheels off by loosening the lug nuts only a few turns and then slowly driving the car in a figure eight (it usually won't take more than a couple of feet).

If you know a martial artist, you might ask for his/her help. A friend of mine who's got a triple black belt or whatever in Taekwondo managed to kick a wheel off that a local mechanic had given up on.

There's also the blue wrench -- a propane torch can help loosen stuff up. Just be careful not to go too far and cook the wheel bearing.

Thanks eveyone, just gave up and took it down to the local shop, they hooked me up and removed and greased em for free!

For future I use a rubber mallet or a small sledge from the inside to hit the tire as I slowly rotate the wheel while hitting. For Ford trucks I smash the wheel itself and don't care as the asshole engineers they hired out of the local kindergarten for that garbage company never heard of electrolytic corrosion and the alloys fuse to the tight-fit steel center hubs after only a few years.

Steve

I have a 5 foot pipe that fits nicely over the end of my socket wrenches.

I dont have as many socket wrenches as i used to... Only The Strong Survive!

evolutionmovement wrote:For future I use a rubber mallet

yes, use a large rubber mallet on the outer rim edge. a few solid wacks, works every time.

scottzg wrote:I have a 5 foot pipe that fits nicely over the end of my socket wrenches.

I dont have as many socket wrenches as i used to... Only The Strong Survive!

that's the beauty of canadian tire tools, life time warranty. You can snap breaker bars all day long and they'll just keep taking em back.