Wheel removal: a cautionary tale

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Satch

MB Enthusiast
Joined
Nov 24, 2003
Messages
3,508
Location
Surrey
Car
S211 E320Cdi Avantgarde Estate & Toyota Land Cruiser
Well I have had a terrible last evening/morning

Decided that I had to rotate the wheels front/back again as I an still on winter tyres. Shifted wheel bolts no trouble but could I get the wheels off? No.

They were really stuck, especially the rears. The wheels had been refurbished (full repaint) and at some point piant/laquers had fused between hub and wheel so they were effectively stuck on.

The fronts came off after a bit of tugging & wiggling, refitting a couple of bolts when they had moved a bit and retightening to break seal and some more tugging. Without benefit of a 3 ton trolley jack and axle stands I would have been really unhappy with the amount of sideways effort exerted on a jacked up car.

But the rears were swines. Applied leverage, attacked with hair dryer and very careful injection of WD40. Eventually got them off by the old "this will shift most things" trick of threading nylon cargo strap between wheel spokes, threading strap through centre hole of 10kg weight and bashing weight against strap so it was effectively working like a large slide hammer.

They are now off and back on again but with loads of LM grease on hub wheel carriers. I really would not like to have that problem on the road.

And I am now going to murder some beers
 
Nice idea making the slide hammer.
One trick is to kick the edge of the rim/tyre with the bolts undone.

Make sure you put grease on the hub to stop the wheels binding again.
 

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