I have aftermarket wheels on my car and notice that the lugnuts keep coming loose after a week or so. I do have the hubcentric rings installed.

Why would lug nuts come loose? Nothing is stripped, I checked.

 

sent a pm... try lubricating the wheel studs. I had a problem with corrosion between the lugs, wheels, and brake rotor (all dissimilar metels) that prevented the lugs nuts from seating properly.

 

Two other quick thoughts:

Did you torque them evenly and use a two stage process? My OEM wheels would sometimes have a lugnut back off slightly. I found that tightening them in two stages (and raising the torque about 10 lbs) cleared the problem up.

Are you using the stock lug nuts? My track wheels were designed to use a standard "acorn" lug nut, unlike our OEM wheels. I ended up buying a second set of lug nuts for them.

 

Yeah, I just don't want to strip the lugnuts. I did this on a Civic one time and it was a pain.

I am using a type of lugnut called a "splinedrive" lugnut. This is what DiscountTireDirect.com sent me with the wheels. So far my front passenger side wheel has came loose more than any other. The other three wheels have remained fairly tight.

 

hmm... I had the same problem right front lug nuts going loose.

Check for play in the right front suspension bits. If you have the same symtoms that I do, then you will find just a little bit of play coming from the spindle area. It only happens with the wheel off the car, never when it's mounted and torqued to spec.

To get rid of the problem with the lug nuts backing off, I greased the studs with a small amount of grease or anti-seaze.

 

for such aftermarket lugnuts, they are lighter then stock but also fragile. it should have come with instructions on how much to torque those lugnuts. i would recommend you go to a shop so they can do it right or buy a torque wrench. my feeling is your doing it my hand and its not torqueing enough.

 

Ah, OK. When I ordered new lugnuts I went with Gorillas. Kind of heavy, but since they were for my track wheels, I chose strength over weight. I'm probably just paraniod, but I've seen enough people strip lightweight lugnuts when they keep swaping between track and street wheels that I didn't want to risk having problems.

 

just another thought......

check the area where the wheel contact to the lugnuts.....if it have paint/ coating on it, it may the cause of loose lugnuts. I remember when I paint one of my wheels, the lugnuts keep loose up, I then sand the area I said above and it never happen again.

 

Wouldn't adding grease or lubricant make the lugnuts easier to come off??

 

now that you have greased the lug nuts, you must Decrease the torque. If you are going to do any work on your car you should get a simple torque wrench.( just the cheap one with a bar and pointer on a gauge is good) without grease you should look for 75 lbs or so for the wheel lugs. with grease I'd try 65 to 70lb.

remember torque ratings are given for dry connections unless stated otherwise.

 

no not really. Just use as little as possible. If you use large blobs of grease, then it could help the lug nuts loosen.

You want to use just enough to work it's way between the threads. Torque the wheel down, go for a drive, then re-check the torque.

 

I'm assuming you have some aftermarket aluminum lug nuts. Are you using a torque wrench to tighten them? If so, how much torque are you applying? The torque spec for the OE lug nuts is 73 ft-lbs +/- 7. Check w/ the aftermarket lug nut manufacturer for the correct torque spec for their lug nuts.

 

one point that is important, snug all the bolts up hand tight, then start the torque sequence, in a cross pattern but not all the way to max torque. do all studs about half or three quarters then go back over them again up to torque.
what you don't want to do is torque them up one at a time from the word go.

 

Yes, I always tighten in a cross pattern.

Strange thing is only the front driver side wheel lugs are giving me trouble. Seems like I have to tighten them up about once every 40 or 50 miles.

 

Bump for a old thread cause I am having the same problem.
I do all of my own tire rotations and never had a problem till the last one. I have stock rims and stock lugs and nuts. I rotated my tires and for some odd reason I had one where my lugs loosed up real bad on me where the the rim was wobbling. So I tightened it up and at the sametime checked the rest of them. A few weeks later I notice what I think is a brake rubbing so I am looking at the brake and I notice the 3 of the lugs are loose there as well. So I tighten it up check the rest and notice the I tighten the fronts more as well. Any ideas why this is happening. I have never had this problem before and I garage the car so I know no one is playing a joke on me.