Locking Wheel Nuts

[Wass]

I was rotating the wheels on our Prius and was just tightening the security nut and the key sheared off in the nut. I have now been left with a key with no spare and am unable to remove the wheels.

I have always tightened the nuts by hand and used a torque wrench to finish off. The ease with which the key sheared off indicated a stress fracture meaning that the keys are susceptible to work hardening and are therefore likely to shear off with regular use or (suffer the thought ) impact wrenching.

My previous Volvos, Audi and Honda all had spare keys and therefore wouldnt have been a problem. The Toyota doesnt have a spare key and the universal removal tools do not work on the Toyota design of nut.

Luckily I have a nut which I hadnt yet fitted and I have the old key. Once I remove the nuts I will be replacing them with conventional wheel nuts since I am sure that at some time in the cars past someone has "gunned" the key nuts leading to the key failiure. That someone would, without any shaddow of doubt, refer to him or herself as a trained professional since amatures tend not to have access to impact guns.

I am tempted to mig weld a nut onto the ends of these locking nuts but will bide my time while the dealers try to get a key for me.

My Lexus uses exactly the same type of locking wheel nuts and the box has the same part number on it. and so I compared the keys to find that each key has a letter stamped onto the top of it. My broken prius key is a J whilst my Lexus key is an X. I assume that this is the factory ident which is worth making a note of.

[steve2006]

Most reputable tyre places can remove locking wheel nuts without causing damage to the wheels, one method is to put a blob of weld on the offending nut then hammer a suitable socket over it and then remove the nut.

If I had a decent set of alloy wheels and tyres I wouldn't fancy not having locking nuts on, there are some decent after market suppliers but Toyota generally have the sleeved wheel nuts as opposed to the tapered types so make sure they are suitable.

[Wass]

I am still going to replace the locking wheel nuts with conventional nuts since I park my car in a garage and i reeason that anyone deturmined enough to carry a jack around with them will almost certainly carry the wherewithall to swipe some wheels and tyreslocking nuts or not. I found out today that the small piece of paper which comes with the locking wheel nut set has a 3 figure code on it which identifies the key.