How far can you drive your car with all the lug nuts removed?

How far can you drive your car with all the lug nuts removed?

This is a real challenge. Remove all the lug nuts from all the tires on your car. Get in the car, and drive. How far can you drive without having a wheel fall off? This takes real skill, and separates the boys from the men.

Try it, and post your distance on this newsgroup. The person driving the furthest before a wheel falls off is the winner of the *BEST DRIVER AWARD*. "Watch your speedometer for the distance".

  • DO NOT do this in traffic. Do it on a private road or a little used back road, when there is no traffic. Be sure to have your lug nuts in the car, along with a jack, and a lug wrench. Sooner or later at least one wheel will fall off, and you'll have to raise the car and put the wheel back on, with the lug nuts.
Reply to
gerry.atrick74
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snipped-for-privacy@home.com wrote the following on 10/16/2012 4:35 AM (ET):

I don't have lug nuts on my tires.

I drove 352 miles without the lug nuts on my wheels. How much did I win?

Reply to
willshak

willshak,

I'm guessing the OP has not seen wire wheels. No lug nuts. "Removing the lug nuts from the tires" is rather funny, too.

Dave M.

Reply to
David L. Martel

At least that one has something going for it...as opposed to the sophmoric OP's.

Harry K

Reply to
Harry K

Someone here was driving after having tires put on at national tire and battery. Going over a bridge wheel spun off damaging fender. Had to get toad.

Greg

Reply to
gregz

Frog couldn't do the job? Or mabee Salamander?

Reply to
clare

I've had a few vehicles come in where the rim was rusted to the hub so badly I could not knock them off with a sledgehammer and I resorted to putting the nuts on very loosely and going for an agressive ride. On one ond Chevy pickup it took almost 10 miles of accelerating, braking, and swerving to get all 4 loose.

Reply to
clare

Aluminum wheels on steel hubs can get very interesting. I to had to loosen 5 wheel nuts and drive around the block turning sharply left and right to free up the wheel I wanted to rotate a few years ago.

Reply to
hrhofmann

I have a better challenge. Lets see who can hit themselves in the face with a shovel the most times before they give up. Post your answer when you wake up.

car and put the wheel back on, with the lug nuts.

Yeah, and quite possibly have a thousand dollars in body work to do and maybe a brake disk to replace. Maybe a punctured tire and/or damaged rim.

If you really want to tr this, you could back your lug nuts off a quarter inch and drive until you heard the thump. That would tell you the same thing with relatively little risk to you vehicle.

Reply to
Larry Fishel

Should have had the tires ribbetted on.

Less likely to be toad.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

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Someone here was driving after having tires put on at national tire and battery. Going over a bridge wheel spun off damaging fender. Had to get toad.

Greg

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Perhaps you should ask how far you can drive and stop safely after you front tier blows at 80 miles per hour!!!

No not driver but car is the winer

Reply to
Grumpy

Umm, the only automotive wheels without lug nuts (plural) are the ones referred to as "knock off" wheels and they do have a nut... just one. Wire wheels can be of either flavor, knock off, regular lug nuts or...

My car has no lug nuts or knock off nut to hold my wheels on. It has lug bolts. So far I've gone over 50K miles so I win!!!

Reply to
Gordon Shumway

Had tires changed at a Costco some years back. A week or so later one of the wheels fell off (just had the car inspected that day, too) just after the wife got off an Interstate. Wife was about to change *someone* into a toad.

Reply to
krw

You did not win. I drove my Karmann Ghia thousands of miles with no lug nuts.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

49 VW, 53 Dodge, and 57 Fargo - over 200,000 miles, 130,000 miles and 260,000 miles with no lug nuts. And then there was the '38 Terrible Pain (Terraplane) - also no lug nuts. I didn't put many miles on it and have no idea how many miles were on it when I got it.

I've also lost a wheel due to an AXLE nut coming off the rear of an MGB when my apprentice failed to re-install the cotter pin- - -It took about 3 weeks and over 750 miles.

Reply to
clare

I have a friend with this problem on one wheel. He has pounded on it too. I just sent him your method.

He has a 2000 Nissan pickup, but I figure the wheels are steel.

Reply to
micky

Well, I drove with no lug nuts and no studs on one wheel and I did it in the heart of Lower Manhattan, including going up Broadway the wrong way on a one-way street.

Admittedly, it was a summer Sunday at 7PM and in *lower* Manhattan, there were no cars coming, probably no moving cars except on Canal.

I had had surgery the previous Dec. 15th, and I left my car in Long Island City (Queens) while I was in the hospital and recuperating. It snowed the first day, and on one wheel I had nol put the hubcap. They plowed the street, but that just pushed more snow up against my tires.

In August I took my brother to the Newark airport, and when I got back to the car, that tire was flat. The nuts were rusted on. I had to literally stand on the lug wrench to free them, but 3 or 4 studs broke and 1 or 2 (adjacent) studs didn't. I didn't want to have to have the car towed to a gas station, then go back to Brooklyn and have to come back the next day. I decided to drive home on surface streets. It was the left rear tire. When I turned left or went straight ahead it was fine. When I turned right, it went thump, thump thlump. I guess Newark Airport is about 15 miles from the Holland tunnel, and I went maybe 20 mph where it was straigjht, slower elsewhere.

When I got to the Holland Tunnel I hesitated. There is a big fine for breaking down in the Holland Tunnel, I guess it includes a big charge for the tow truck, plus I didn't want to tie up traffic when I broke down. (Sunday evenings traffic into the city is heavy with people who went away for the weekend.) . But I'm an idiot so I continued. I made itt through the tunnel, even with a 130^ right curve at the end and went east on Beach St. to merge with Canal. Just as I approached Broadway, my last stud broke and the car, a '67 Pontiac Catalina, fell on the frame I guess since the brake drum never got hurt. I thought I'd be in big trouble if it sat there for Monday morning rush hour, but I found a parking lot a short block up Broadway. .

Not thinking it would work I jacked up the car and put the wheel on, lowered the jack and made it less than an inch before it fell off. I tried it again and made it 2 feet. I tried it a third time and I went

15 feet forward, turned left, went 100 feet north, turned left again and went over the curb, across the side walk, right next to the building on my left. Then I put the jack back in the trunk and took the subway home to Brooklyn

That night I read the shop manual on replacing studs, said to use a hydraulic press. The next morning I rode my bicycle to Atlantic Wheel and Rim on Atlantic Ave. I like to talk (as you can see) and I told the guy about my problem. He said no one uses a press to put in studs. They put them through the hole, put the lug nut on and tighen the nut and that pullls the stud in. I bought 5 of each for 10 dollars or less. Took the bike back, took the train to my car and in

30 or 45 minutes the car was fixed. The lot manager wanted to charge me for 3 days parking, because I had spanned three spaces, but I convinced him it was only 10 AM and he'd rent the spaces after I left, and he settled for a day and half.

I still can't believe i drove 135 feet, and the whole cost to me was $10 and 2 subway fares.

Yup. Maybe if you go straight ahead you can go pretty far?

Reply to
micky

brake disk to replace. Maybe a punctured tire and/or damaged rim.

and drive until you heard the thump.

I did that too once. I guess I hadn't tightened the wheel, and I was going 100 miles from NYC to Allentown Pa. 70 miles in it started thumping, but I jumped to the conclusion it was a bad wheel bearing and just kept driving (which is a bad idea for a bearing too.)

When I finally got to my desitnation, I looked and the wheel was lose and I'd damaged the threads on one or two of the studs. Left front wheel. IIRC I tightened four of them and a couple weeks later, I punched out the bad stud(s?) and replaced it. The same guy at Atlantic Wheel and Rim had told me no one uses a press to remove studs either, even though the shop manual says to do that. They use a hammer and a punch or a drift.

Good point.

Reply to
micky

Back around 1970 or 71, I had a similar thing happen to an old truck. Several studs were broken and eventually the last ones broke and the wheel fell off. It was a front tire. I was about 25 blocks from home, and late in the evening. I walked home, and took two pieces of hardwood. Drilled 2 holes in each piece. The plan was to clamp them around the hub. However, I had no bolts long enough, and the hardware stores were closed. That's when I noticed the old bicycle in our basement. I removed the long bolts and nuts that hold the bike wheel to the frame.

After getting a friend to drive me back to the truck, I rigged the wood blocks and bike bolts over the hub, and tightened them as tight as I could. The friend followed me in his car, and I got about halfway home when I could feel the wheel was wobbling. I re-tightened the wood blocks, and continued home. The wheel fell off right when I got into my parking space behind our house. The next day I had the neighbor (a race car builder and mechanic), fix it properly. That's when I learned it was not a tough job and did not require a press.

Reply to
gerry.atrick74

Why didn't you leave it until the next day? It's not like someone was gonna drive it off.

nb

Reply to
notbob

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