Wheel lug nuts: OK to use the flats for conical ? (11 Viewers)

[e9999]

I have the nuts intended for the alloy wheels. These nuts have the flat washer attached and a cylindrical body that goes in the hole of the alloy wheel. They also have a small conical end, likely intended to help get the cylinder body inside the hole more easily.
Any reason not to use these nuts for a (Tundra) steel wheel with chamfered (conical) holes? Of course, it would then use only the chamfered end to hold the wheel. If I measured this correctly, there would in fact be more stud thread used with these steel wheels than with the OEM alloys. (And yes I'm aware that the flat washers may make some noise since they will be loose.)
thanks
Eric

 

[PHAEDRUS]

Eric,
I am not sure what you are saying about the different ends here but having seen my 33x 12.50 pro comp x terrains bouncing across the road and into a feild at 35 mph I would say just get some new lug nots that are the right type. not worth messing around with in my gumble opinion.
Dave

 

[Riley]

What the Walrus said.... get the correct lug nuts. I don't think it's an option to use the alloy ones. I can't remember how much they were but it wasn't that much. Or try a wrecker.

 

[e9999]

well, OK, but how would a "correct" nut differ from what I have, besides the unused flat washer?
E

 

[IdahoDoug]

I see what you're saying here Eric, and can see no problem save one. Obvious you've put thought into it. The only issue I can see would be to reassure yourself the conical end on your lug nuts is the same as the conical end of the "correct" lugnuts. By doing this, you're assuring that there's as much surface contact between the nut and wheel as the wheel is designed to have. An improper shape would obviously lead to problems as their would not be a proper mating of the two surfaces. I'd also torque to the steel wheel setting, or the conical nut setting whichever is greater.

DougM

 

[e9999]

I see what you're saying here Eric, and can see no problem save one. Obvious you've put thought into it. The only issue I can see would be to reassure yourself the conical end on your lug nuts is the same as the conical end of the "correct" lugnuts. By doing this, you're assuring that there's as much surface contact between the nut and wheel as the wheel is designed to have. An improper shape would obviously lead to problems as their would not be a proper mating of the two surfaces. I'd also torque to the steel wheel setting, or the conical nut setting whichever is greater.

DougM

well, the steel wheel is very thin, so there is very little contact with the nut either way. Seemed at first glance that the angle was similar but don't know that for sure. Will try and measure. And I'll also take one off after torquing down and inspect for marks on the wheel. I've put them on with 109 lbft.

Thing is that it's not obvious that conical lugs would have the right angle either if bought aftermarket, and if from Toys will bust the budget badly for sure... So it the ones I have work, why not?

E

 

[robbie]

From what I remember of the two types is the the later alloy taper is rather thin, where the taper nuts for the older stype of alloy wheel is thicker, by twice to 3 times. this give far more surface for the nut to contact the wheel hole. I have seen this done on newer nuts to older wheel for a spare situation, it was not pretty, looked scary. As for this on steel, I personally would not do it, the steel wheel needs the wider face to seat properly. Most after market ones that say they are for toyota will have the proper seat face. With steel wheel you will want to check the torque once or twice after torque up the wheel, just a good habit. If it was me and only me in the truck, I may get away with what you want to do for a while, but if you are hauling kids around or your wife, it is not worth the risk of messing with 40-50 dollars worth of lug nuts. get the right nuts. later robbie

 

[e9999]

snip
As for this on steel, I personally would not do it, the steel wheel needs the wider face to seat properly. Most after market ones that say they are for toyota will have the proper seat face.
snip
robbie

I'm afraid I don't understand this. The steel wheel is only a couple of mm thick. So whatever nut you use, there will only be at the most a tad over 2mm of metal contact between wheel and nut. This is assuming matching angles. So what do you mean by wider face?
The angle is an issue, of course, will look into this.
E

 

[Doc]

e9999, I know what you're saying- I've recently switched wheel sets on my FJ60, the stock wheels were much like the steel wheels you are wanting to use, and the wheels I put on use the flat seat newer style nuts.

So, now I have both sets of lugs. I've been told over and over to not use the wrong kind of nut with the wheels, don't really have a good answer for you, but I'd stick to the advice I was given, since it's easy for me now that I have two sets.

You might try a junkyard for the conical's, or Autozone sells 'em cheap too.

 

[e9999]

e9999, I know what you're saying- I've recently switched wheel sets on my FJ60, the stock wheels were much like the steel wheels you are wanting to use, and the wheels I put on use the flat seat newer style nuts.

So, now I have both sets of lugs. I've been told over and over to not use the wrong kind of nut with the wheels, don't really have a good answer for you, but I'd stick to the advice I was given, since it's easy for me now that I have two sets.

You might try a junkyard for the conical's, or Autozone sells 'em cheap too.

don't mean to sound argumentative here, but obviously you can't use regular conical lug nuts with a wheel designed for flat washer nuts, so you were right to get new nuts for your situation. It's the other way around that I'm wondering about, and that sure seems OK to me (if the angles match). (Ant that's only because the flat washer nuts happen to have a conical end.)

E

 

[Rich]

The angle of the taper of stock Toyota lug nuts of the "flat" style does not match the angle of taper of the "conical" style. I think the experiment you are doing is very ill-advised.

 

[robbie]

So first of all 2mm is only like.080 of a inch. If you really only have that much contact that is not enough. the face of most conical lug nuts is 3/8 of a inch. Some like .375 inch. big difference. As for what I was refering to is the faces width, the face(taper area) on the wheel will also be close to .250 thick or thicker. The steel thickness is going to be close to .250 to .375 thick as well. If by using a very thin face of the newer style you will not be making the proper contact, thus not fully getting clamping force designed by the manafacture to hold the wheel to the hub. Hope this makes sense. Again if 50 dollars is going to brake the bank for safty, then maybe you are driving the wrong vechicle. later robbie

 

[e9999]

guys, this is not only about the $50 bucks. I was just curious about this and wanted to differentiate between urban myth and reality.

So I went and measured things up a bit.

Summary:
length of tapered face in steel wheel: 3.3mm
lenght of tapered face on OEM for alloy nut: 3.3mm

angle of tapered face on steel wheel: 30 degrees
angle of tapered face on nut: 30 degrees.

Magnified visual inspection shows close to perfect match of tapered sections on wheel and nut.

I Dykemed the nut. After 109 lbft torque, the Dykem showed perfectly even face contact of 2.6mm long, or close to the full length available for contact. The difference is probably due to slight differences in diameter of the hole vs nut. May be different with other nuts or holes.

IOW, I don't think it can possibly be any better than this, very likely not with aftermarket nuts (do all the manufacturers of wheels and nuts use the same angle?) and perhaps not even better with Toyota OEM conical lugs since these nuts are after all also OEM Toyota and why the heck would they not have made the taper specs the same on all their wheels and nuts?

Material wise, I doubt the "alloy wheel" nut would be any less strong than the conical ones, and as mentioned, I am using more thread with the steel wheel.

Rich: what did you base your statement about angles on? I measured mine.

Robbie: the best contact area you will ever get is the smallest of the tapered areas on either wheel or nut. It does not matter one bit what the larger one of the two is. The width of tapered hole face on the wheel is nowhere close to 1/4" let alone 3/8", it's only about 1/8" here.

So, it's kinda funny that I would be advised to buy aftermarket conical lugs that are far more of an unknown quantity than these, now well spec'ed by yours truly.

I guess my numbers don't support some of the assertions in posts above. But, of course, caution should prevail and I want to err on the conservative side. Am I still missing something?

thanks all

Eric

 

[Doc]

Maybe it is just an urban myth then? It was nothing I ever researched... just took what other people said as truth on the matter.

The most important thing is that the wheels are seated correctly and nuts torqued to the proper spec.

 

[robbie]

High quality does not allways cost that much more. I am at home so I do not have all the stuff avaliable to me. I do have a gorrilla nut and a stock toyota nut. The toyota nuts full face is 5/16 width with 1/4 contact area. As for the gorrilla nut it full face is5/16 with 1/4 contact area. Both have the same taper, but I can not measure the degrees, no angle finder at home. So 3.3 mm = .132 of inch, where a 1/4 = .250 of an inch contact. Will this is on a older stock alloy wheel, the contact is almost twice the contact area, thus providing more force through the hole. I do not have a steel wheel to look at here at home, I will look the next time I am at the shop to see what a stock and after market steel wheel looks like. With the smaller contact area you are not providing good clamping force in my mind.
You say that the seat on the wheel is only 3.3 mm (.132 of inch) and your nut face is only 3.3 with with a clamping area of 2.6 mm(.104). quick question, does the nut have any shoulder that would prevent the wheel hole from working through the hole. On the stock nut as well as the aftermarket there is well over 1/16 inch shoulder beyound the hole, not allowing the bolt to work through the hole, is this still maintained with the later model mag style nut? If not you may have a problem. The statement about the dollars comes from your statement about braking the bank for the proper nuts for the job. later robbie

 

[e9999]

High quality does not allways cost that much more. I am at home so I do not have all the stuff avaliable to me. I do have a gorrilla nut and a stock toyota nut. The toyota nuts full face is 5/16 width with 1/4 contact area. As for the gorrilla nut it full face is5/16 with 1/4 contact area. Both have the same taper, but I can not measure the degrees, no angle finder at home. So 3.3 mm = .132 of inch, where a 1/4 = .250 of an inch contact. Will this is on a older stock alloy wheel, the contact is almost twice the contact area, thus providing more force through the hole. I do not have a steel wheel to look at here at home, I will look the next time I am at the shop to see what a stock and after market steel wheel looks like. With the smaller contact area you are not providing good clamping force in my mind.
You say that the seat on the wheel is only 3.3 mm (.132 of inch) and your nut face is only 3.3 with with a clamping area of 2.6 mm(.104). quick question, does the nut have any shoulder that would prevent the wheel hole from working through the hole. On the stock nut as well as the aftermarket there is well over 1/16 inch shoulder beyound the hole, not allowing the bolt to work through the hole, is this still maintained with the later model mag style nut? If not you may have a problem. The statement about the dollars comes from your statement about braking the bank for the proper nuts for the job. later robbie

I imagine that the alloy wheels have a much larger contact area than the steel ones given that the Aluminum is much softer so it needs more contact to prevent deformation.
There is no shoulder on these nuts but I can not imagine that the hole in the steel wheel would "stretch" by 1mm or so all around.

thanks
E

 

[Rich]

Eric,

I have both ''97 stock wheels and 94 stock wheels, and stock lugnuts for each. I do not have a machinist's protractor with arms short enough to measure tha angle without interference from the flat washer. I butted the lugnuts end to end and eye balled the angles. It looks to me that the "flat washer" lugnut taper is steeper than the "conical" lugnut, but in all fairness that could be an illusion due the fact that the taper on the "conical" lugnut is much longer than the taper on the "flat washer" lugnut.

The length of the taper is a bit more than 2 mm on the "flat washer" lugnut and looks to be 6 mm on the "conical" lugnut. From eye balling the currently installed '94 wheels it looks like all or almost all (>95%) of the taper of the "conical" lugnut contacts the stock '94 wheel.

When I bought the '94 wheels I didn't hesitate for a moment to order the appropriate lugnuts. It is obvious to me that the "flat washer" lugnuts are only intended to install wheels without tapered lug holes.

If you want an expert opinion, you might send one of your lugnuts to the wheel manufacturer's engineering dept and ask them if it is suitable. I can guess the answer.

 

[ace10]

just a quick note... about a year ago i went over to the toy stealer, and they wanted $3.XX per lug nut. it was close to $100 for the set.

aaron

 

[IdahoDoug]

Couple points here worth noting.

Clamping force (wheel to hub pressure) is exactly the same regardless of the amount of contact surface area between the nut and wheel taper. This is determined by the stud thread pitch and the torque setting and is a separate issue from whether the nut taper and the wheel hole taper match.

Sounds like he's confirmed that that the tapers are the same, which means the washer nut will indeed provide the proper pressure between the nut and wheel, which is also very important to prevent loosening. This is all there is to the story about whether this is appropriate or not. I've not seen the washer nut as I have a manly 80, but it would seem to be industry practice to standardize that taper so that it can also be used if the vehicle has a compact spare with steel wheel. I'm not aware of any 80s with compact spares in any country, but I've seen this on other vehicles.

DougM

 

[Rich]

The length of the tapers are far from being the same.