pickardracing

Hey, i have a real bonehead question. My Iroc has those stupid anti-theft lugnuts on each whell and guess what... I havent needed to take the wheels off since i bought it (bought it, and began restoration right away.) SURPRISE! no little adapter to get the nuts off... Anybody know how to get these stupid things off without the adapter? I am lost and cant get them off for my life...

joshp14

go to GM and get yourself a new lock socket. Other than that the only thing i can think of is the 'Bolt Out' made by Craftsman from Sears. It is used primarily for removing stripped bolts and such. It has digging teeth that 'grab' the bot and take it off.

I haven't ever used it but i suppose it works. After that just go to your local autozone and by 4 new lugs a 59 cents each.

Soulrev

Shortly after I bought my car I had a flat tire (I knew the tires were bad, expected to replace them). Well, the guy who sold it to me left that lug key in his garage on accident.. Didn't help me out much while I'm stranded in the middle of nowhere.. Luckily I did have my toolbox with me so I managed to get it off with vise grips (took FOREVER to get them at the right angle and stay on) and a ratchet between the spokes of my GTA rims for leverage. I had to put a lot of weight into it to get it to budge but it came off..

si_camaro

This is NOT recommended except for extreme circumstances (like flat tires), but if you tighten all the other nuts as tight as you possibly can with a normal tire wrench you should alleviate the pressure on the locking nut enough to remove it, though you'll still need some kind of grips to hold it tight enough.

Si

snisbet375

i had this problem twice. Once i used a good pair of vise grips (craftsman) cheap ones wont work very good. Then beat the living @#$% out of it with a hammer back and forth till it came loose. The other time i had someone use a torch on it to get it nice and hot, then it came right off. The torch way is much safer and easier for your rims. The hammer and visegrip way took me a long time. Like Two hours of beating. I made many dents from being pissed off from missing the wrench with the hammer. So again i recomend the torch.

swerve-driver

I had the same problem.
I imagine we're talking about the locking nuts that came stock on the camaros- with the external threads for screwing on the black plastic nut covers.

Here is what I did- it worked very well.

1. On each wheel, tighten the four non-keyed nuts tighter than they are (about 150 ft. lbs).

2. Use a 13/16 socket (12 point) and hammer it on over the locking nut. The points of the socket are forced on over the external threads and really dig into it. Make sure you are hitting the socket square.

3. Enusure the socket is on straight, put a breaker bar on it and remove the lug nut.

4. I used a punch to knock the lugnut out of the socket before moving on to the next one.

Thats it.

Best-
S-D

This worked so well, I began to wonder about how good the GM wheel locks really are.......

Vader

Most tire shops have about eleventy-jillion different wheel lock keys lying around, and likely have one that is close enough to get your lugs off. Once they're off, install replacements, or let me know where you live so I can get a spare set of wheels.

Randy82WS7

luckily the original key tool was in the 88 bird when i got it,

i see that there are some interesting methods of removing locks without proper tool, hehehe could also weld an old socket to themif youve got a welder.


good luck

joshp14

...only if you have 4 spare sockets sitting around...or if you weld and torch 4 times

bad84z

I did the same thing you did. I went to buy new tires and these guys wanted to charge me 50 bucks to cut them off with a torch. I was like f that, I will go take them off myself. They were like yah, whatever, that will not work. About 25 minutes later, I pulled my car in the garage and had them put my tires on. Worked fine for me.