Wheel locks. Ya hate ''em, right?

Ok, maybe you don't. But I do. So I was doing some routine maintenance on my Honda, went to take the wheels off. The little wheel-lock key wouldn't grab.

I looked, saw that the material inside that made it a key had broken off. It would never work. I'd had the car into a repair shop recently, so maybe they'd gone "Rambo" with the air wrench. Or maybe I did it. I don't know. Either way, the key wasn't going to take the wheel lock off.

I looked at the wheels. Who in the world would want to steal THESE? They are old alloy wheels with scuffs and curb rash and over 100K miles. No one would want them.

Since I had a full set of lug nuts from a previous parts car, I set about taking off all four wheel locks and replacing them with regular lug nuts. A socket should do it, but what size? Turns out a 3/4" 12-point socket fits right over the wheel lock. Just tap it on, tap tap tap. Go all the way or it'll slip off when you go to remove the lug nut.

Wheel locks came off, no problem. But you'll have to spend a few minutes extracting them from the socket. I put mine in the vice and used a good-sized drift. In this case one of those big nails or "spikes" like they use in landscaping did the trick. Good fit, no side-to-side movement. Small drift would not work, moved around too much.

Anyway, there is probably a specialized tool to accomplish the same thing, but this is how I did it with what was on hand. And you might end up tossing the 3/4" socket in the scrap pile afterwards since it gets pretty beat up. I chose an "orphan" that I was not too fond of, had come with a bunch of random tools I bought.

See illustration.

Gerrit

Field expediency (make due with what you got)

They're great when they're new, but after 10, 15, 20 years, not so much.

If there is one thing China has done, it's made custom wheels cheap enough that the incentive to steal them has pretty much gone away and those stupid security lugs are no longer necessary.

Pounding a socket on them to get them off is one of the best methods.

I quit using them as the removal tool never made it back in the glove
box after use at the tire shop. My fault for not checking, lucky I never
had a flat, would have been SOL. Went back to regular lug nuts and
will let the insurance company handle it should a theft occur.

You got out way too easy! LOL

I despise those things!!!

Last new car we bought, dearship had to
take them off, replace with regular lug
nuts & put the lock nut where the sun
never shines or we wouldn't take the
deal.

As a footnote to this post, soon after I replaced the wheel locks with regular lug nuts, my brother had a flat in his car in a wilderness area in West Va. Couldn't find the wheel lock key, had to be towed to a local garage. That's the kind of situation I really wanted to avoid. Would have replaced them all even if the key didn't turn out to be broken.

Gerrit

Wheel locks have kinda become pointless. For less than 100 bucks on Amazon you can get a set of removers that have most of the keys for the locks out there and a set of the "easy out" style removers for any you don't have the key for. Any tweaker stealing wheels will have also stolen a battery powered impact wrench as well. Chances are he will have your wheels off in less time than it would take you to find your wheel lock key. It's like watching a methed out pit crew.

I had to weld nuts onto them once Plus protect the aluminum wheel from welding damage. No key.

Had a customer come in wanting all 4 removed from his newer model Lincoln.

He had been out on the highway when a tire blew out and he could not find the key.

He called up a tire shop from a nearby town who sent out a service truck.

Instead of even trying to get the lock off the service guy got out his bead breaker hammer and tire bars busted off the old tire and installed a new one with the rim still on the car the same way some do tractor tires.

He must have been good at it, if I started swinging my tire hammer at an alloy rim on a fancy new car I doubt the results would be pretty.