Ok I went to evolution autox school yesterday and learned a lot of new things. Total runs was about 25 or so. So today I show up to Hollywood park for practice and checked my lugnuts to see if they were tight. Well what do u know, the left front side of the wheel has 3 loose lugnuts (can unscrew with my hand). Didnt have my key so had to run to kragen to buy a set of 4 new lugnts. So after 6 runs at practice, I check my lug nuts again and well what do you know, I was able to unscrew one with my hand, and the other ones were loose when I retorqued them. Does anyone know why the lugnuts on my left front wheel keeps backing out?

 

check to see if your torque wrench is in spec by using someone elses.

 

try someone else's torque wrench like tyson mentioned, but.. if you torqued all your lugnuts with the same torque wrench and only the left front is backing out, i'd have to say take a good look at the studs... and how many ft/lbs are you torquing(sp) to?

 

are the lugs on new rims?if the rim has paint on it where the lugnut touches the rim then scrape it off, this can cause lugnuts to loosen also

 

oh yeah, do the lugnut seating match the wheel? taper vs acorn.

 

That was my first thought.

 

Its only happening to one of my wheels though. I have owned my Kosei K1 rims for about 5 months now and I do not think the torque wrench is my problem cause it is fairly new. One thing I noticed about the lug nuts were that there was some paint shavings on them from the rim.

My lugs are acorn shape. Are they the correct one for kosei rims?

Andrew



[Modified by Andrew 825SM, 9:48 PM 3/1/2003]

 

No, most aftermarket wheels (like your Koseis) require tapered lug nuts.

 

Ive experienced acorn lugs on aftermarket wheels b/c the previous owner had them on, and I didnt know the difference for the longest time. Problems I had were lugs backing out and threads stripping. Make sure you have the right lugs Stock - acorn, aftermarket - almost always conical/tapered.

 

This is true when dealing with Hondas.

Other makes vary.

Just a heads up for the non-Honda enthusiasts who frequent the board.

 

Here is your answer.

 

I have new K1's with my summer tires. Would you suggest possibly using sandpaper to carefully remove or scuff up the paint where the lug nut seats? Would any compound help on the lug? I would think most threadlockers would make a mess and gum up the threads and generally be not a good idea? Thoughts....

 

I found the Kosei-Acorn lugnut incompatibility thing out the hard way...

 

Eventually the paint will begin to peel off where the nut seats anyway, but if you don't sand it off, you have to keep check on their tightness and re-torque as necessary. I would just sand out the taper, where the nuts seat. I also use a little bit of antisieze on the threads... just a little to prohibit rust and corrosion. Torque wrench is always your friend.

 

Among them, "What happens to an RX-7 on Hoosiers when its lugnuts fail during cornering." I have a feeling that inspired your lugnut inspection?

 

Oh man, that was a horrible sight to see! I was the person lining up for the next run and saw ur car fly up into the air right in front of my eyes. It was an unbelievable sight. So how is your car, is everything ok with it? I think if I had not witnessed that accident, I wouldn't have checked my lugnuts the next day at practice. That could have resulted in my wheel coming off as well because three lugnuts were very loose on one of my rims. So you actually saved me from disaster and I thank you for that.

 

Wasn't my car, thank God. I drive the del Sol. I don't know who the RX-7 driver was; I don't remember seeing him or his car at CSCC events.

 

Oh, hey whats up Matt! Did you stay for the fun runs on Sunday. It was a blast! For some reason I stressed out about competing and hitting cones that I drove very slow times during the comptetion. But on the fun runs, I ran 3 sec faster. Now why couldn't I do that b4!

 

Hi Andrew... I didn't stay for fun runs because I ran in the morning and didn't feel like sticking around. So I only totaled 39 runs for the weekend. Life's hard.

On Sunday, I didn't really see any improvement from the school relative to the fast people in my class. I think part of the problem is that I improve too slowly. I can do 10 runs and shave off a second (or at least half) every time, so with just three runs I'm still slow. But if you look at the fast guys, the first run is slow, then the next two are both fast and quite close to each other, which says to me that they can dial it in right away. I need to work on doing that.