Stuck Lug Nuts For Dummy Drivers

Using a cheater bar on a stuck lug nut

Ever had a flat tire while driving? Unless you have the sort of roadside assistance plan that Giselle Bundchen or Stephan Curry might have – a posse that appears instantly to provide a spare vehicle – you'll have to change it yourself. If you're lucky you'll be able to find your jack, your spare won't be flat, and you'll be able to get all the lug nuts loose. That's if you're lucky: auto shops, in mortal fear of a lawsuit, invariably overtorque lug nuts with an impact wrench, rendering the things so darned tight only the Incredible Hulk could remove them. When you find one that tight, a little surfing will offer solutions – but only if you skip the result at ItStillRuns.com, where eHow's John Smith (sometimes known as David Wimberley....) attacked "How to Remove Stuck Lug Nuts."

Our problem with "Smith" is not that he didn't provide good answers. Oh, no, he told people some of the good ones:

Use penetrating oil on the nut (and he didn't call penetrating oil WD-40) Use a four-way wrench instead of the crummy L-shaped wrench in your tool kit Heat the nut with a propane torch Of course, that presupposes you have any or all of those in your vehicle... Unless you're a plumber, perhaps, it's pretty unlikely that you carry around a propane torch. As for his number four; use an "air gun"? WTF is an air gun? Smith says it's "the tool you see on TV where they quickly change tires in a race-car pit"; though we're inclined to call that tool an "impact wrench." Whatever you call it, though, it's even less likely to be in your trunk than a propane torch. John's last "solution" was much smaller than the compressor and air gun; it's a nut splitter. That's smaller than an impact wrench, too, though you'll need additional tools; something Smith didn't bother to mention.

We were flabbergasted that John didn't even mention simplest solution, one that millions of people use every day: the cheater. All you need do is stick a three- or four-foot length of iron pipe in the trunk, pipe that will fit over the handle of your lug wrench, and you're probably set; even if the lug nut is stuck when you have that inevitable flat in 1) the middle of nowhere, 2) the middle of the night and 3) your best suit. It wouldn't be a bad idea to carry a little penetrating oil, too.

Smith missed the most obvious and easiest answer, though: the best way to remove a stuck lug nut is to not have one in the first place. To keep your lug nuts from getting corroded and rusted tight, rotate the tires religiously. That'll (help) prevent rust. When you get your vehicle home from the shop, stick the lug wrench on all twenty nuts to see if you can get them loose... before you need to. If you can't, now's the time to apply the penetrating oil and cheater. Once you've loosened the overtorqued nuts, you can retighten them properly. Smith says nothing about perhaps the simplest solution, and also says nothing about being prepared: we think that's plenty of reason to award him the Dumbass of the Day.

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