Either swollen nuts or no nuts at all - a DIY mechanic is faced with all sorts of problems that take him by surprise. I used to change the summer and winter wheels all by myself but for the last ten years haven’t done so. On one occasion I just wanted to repair a wheel and demounted it without any problems. Those emerged, though, when I was trying to mount the wheel again. I suddenly noticed that there were no bolts on the hub where I used to hook up the wheel before fixing the nuts. Why that? I’d always had cars with wheel bolts and nuts…
I began to realise that this was a different system forcing me to hold the wheel with one hand while inserting the first screw with the other hand. No chance I could do that. The wheel was too heavy. My solution then was to pile up small cutting boards until the wheel was high enough so that I could insert the screw. Later on, I learnt that there’re wheel mount fixing bolts for that purpose but, basically, any fitting bolt even without thread would do.
After 6 years of arguing about having a Wrongly Sold Pension I recently spent a big slice of it on a Second Hand Aston Martin (I used to say if I ever won the lottery I would buy an Aston Martin), anyhow finding out about them on different Forums it appears that it is a common fault on Aston Martins. Replacements from Aston Martin for mine are priced at £21.89 Each, with 5 to each wheel and so would cost £437.80 to replace them…However, I discovered that they are the same capped stainless steel wheel nuts used on the Ford Transit Van from the early 2000’s and a set of 20 can be bought for £76.99 from Transit Parts UK.
