[Shop-talk] Lug Bolts?

[Nolan]

I've had vehicles with lug bolts, never found it to be that big a deal. 
With the cars, just sit on the ground and use my two feet to hold the wheel 
up and position it.  No problem.  With the tractors, obviously I couldn't do 
that.  But with the tractor you weren't picking those wheels up anyways, 
especially if they were loaded with many hundreds of pounds of calcium 
chloride.

There are conversions on the market to install a stud in the bolt hole so 
you can use a nut.  No experience with them myself.

As to why bolts instead of studs, it's a long running argument in 
engineering circles.  Bolts are stronger than studs and nuts, which is why 
extremely high stressed applications will use bolts, typically grade 8 or 
above.  On a car, it's all superfluous.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Hillman" <hillman at planet-torque.com>
To: <shop-talk at autox.team.net>
Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2007 11:08 PM
Subject: [Shop-talk] Lug Bolts?


>.... so can  anyone give me some good reason why I shouldn't think lug 
>bolts are one of
> the greatest mistakes in automotive engineering history?  What is their 
> purpose, other than
> to take a perfectly good design and ruin it completely?