Off Topic So I went to pick up my wife's car at the garage....

PeteyTwoPointOne

PeteyTwoPointOne

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....after rotate/balance/alignment and the clerk tells me the car suffers from "swollen lug nuts.'

I says "the hell is that? you're joking right?" as I laugh uneasily.

She says, "It's a problem of almost every Ford Escape we work on sooner or later."

Course it's Friday afternoon and can't get replacements in time.

Seems it's a thing nowadays with these lugnuts and it ain't just Fords.

In order to save dollars <or in this case, a few cents per stud> and to skirt regulations over chroming process, a lot of auto manufacturers have went to bimetallic or clad lug nuts.

Well, they get hot, they get over-torqued, spun upon with wrong size impact socket, just general garage stuff, etc. and they start to "delaminate" and moisture does what moisture gonna do...

One thing about being a knife knut and hanging out here, I have a better than average appreciation for the application of hardened steels. :thumbsup: :)

Makes you wonder if they scrimp on something as vital <yet so simple and basic> as lugnuts...where else did they cut corners? 🤔

Anyways fellers, you might want to check your...well :oops: ....you know.

Now bring on the INFI lugnuts! I'd buy 'em and trust my life on them.
 
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As someone who works in parts, this is really common, especially in newer fords. The caps are what swell up and cause issues, I’ve taken the caps off of a lot of them and just leave them without the caps. The caps are basically cheap chrome covers that hide a standard lug nut, at least that’s what I’ve seen when I’ve taken them off. That or you go to a parts store and get some different solid lug nuts to swap them out so that you don’t have future issues.
 
As someone who spent 20 years working for Toyota it’s not just fords I can assure you. At least you didn’t have the excitement that the owners of Toyotas new electric car/utv the bz4 whatever. There wheels were literally falling off riding down the road. If it says anything they didn’t sell any of those vehicles last month and this month isn’t looking good either. Glad I’m done with the auto business.
 
Wow, I figured it was mostly a ford thing, but I don’t have a lot of Toyotas coming into the shop. The amount of recalls for each vehicle is crazy. I’ve had cars come in brand new from ford and they already have recalls. Things are definitely not built to last. I wish things were built more like Busse knives.
 
I spent a year with Volvo and we had their lead field tech come to our shop for a s90 that was brought to the shop a week after the customer had bought it which was a long time before I was a Volvo employee. The car spent something like 9-10 months in the shop waiting for a software update from Volvo to get it running. I remember the field tech telling me that Volvo parts have a definite operating life. He said transmissions and drive train components are “designed” to fail after a certain time. I was absolutely stunned to hear that from the manufacturer. Both my Toyotas have 190000 miles on them all from just doing regular maint.
 
I can see that. We have the technology to make things run a lot longer. I think the longest we had a car in the shop was for 7 months and that was mostly because parts were back ordered and we couldn’t get the one part we needed to finish it. Needless to say, the customer was not happy.
 
Well, on a positive note, one quantum leap for cars I've seen in my lifetime is motor oil.

Heck, I remember Quaker State had paraffin or somesuch junk in it and it just made a hell of a mess and engines didn't last anywheres near the lifespan they do now.

I realize the engineering is next level, but the oil has made just as many changes and adaptations.

I can recall my friends older brother had a 72 Chevy Cheyenne p/u with a short block 350 that had just turned over 100K <without rebuild>... hell, we stood around that truck in awe all day long. You'd think we'd just witnessed the moon walk in person, haha. That was when the oil was in the cardboard cans and you had to punch your own holes in the top. You were uptown if you even had a funnel or one of those punch thru spigots. Most of the time you found yourself punching a pair of hole in the top with a screwdriver.

Not many imports in my childhood days with folks clicking their heels at 100K.
 
I miss my 4Runner dearly. 263000 faithful miles I put on it. Then my 16 year old daughter killed it in 3 months.......

Multiple trips to Knob Creek. Blade Show. All over the eastern edge of the US to Michigan and back to La......no issues. But her driving it to school somehow murdered the unkillable.

But I’ve got a new love now. But.....my son claimed it when he starts driving.
 

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PeteyTwoPointOne said:
Well, on a positive note, one quantum leap for cars I've seen in my lifetime is motor oil.

... That was when the oil was in the cardboard cans and you had to punch your own holes in the top. You were uptown if you even had a funnel or one of those punch thru spigots. Most of the time you found yourself punching a pair of hole in the top with a screwdriver.

Not many imports in my childhood days with folks clicking their heels at 100K.
Click to expand...
I always just used a screwdriver on those old cans, no fancy spigot for me. ;)

The old American cars used to easily go 200K - 300K if cared for.

Many years ago a local Toyota dealer had an old Corolla (197x model IIRC) with over 700K - a salesman drove it as his work car.

I doubt if any of the newer US or Japanese cars would last as long as the well-built ones from the '60s & '70s. I wonder if BMW still has the quality they used to have (probably not I would guess).
 
Regarding the lug nuts, this is nothing new. I ran a Speed Shop from the mid 1980's - late 90's. I kept a set of craftsman 12point SAE and Metric on hand so we could pound them down on problem factory lugs to take them off. If they cracked, it was a quick stop at Sears for instant replacement. The good old days ...
Regarding older cars I have a 1996 Land Cruiser with 285,000 miles that's about to get a head gasket replacement. These things are known to go 4-500,000 before needing a full rebuild.
 
Boss1911 said:
Regarding the lug nuts, this is nothing new. I ran a Speed Shop from the mid 1980's - late 90's. I kept a set of craftsman 12point SAE and Metric on hand so we could pound them down on problem factory lugs to take them off. If they cracked, it was a quick stop at Sears for instant replacement. The good old days ...
Regarding older cars I have a 1996 Land Cruiser with 285,000 miles that's about to get a head gasket replacement. These things are known to go 4-500,000 before needing a full rebuild.
Click to expand...

Not gonna do that anymore...Sears is nearly extinct. But I think Lowe's still carries Craftsman brand, fwiw.
 
I'm guessing the swollen Lugnuts could happen to any vehicle, probably happens more in wet locations is my guess.
That is hilarious that they called them "swollen".
 
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I've notice mine get swollen from time to time.... Oh! wrong parts.... sorry. I've got almost 300,000 miles on my 1998- 5.0-V8 Ford Explorer and it's still going strong and no swollen Lugnuts yet. :cool:
 
I locked my brakes up to avoid hitting a deer that ran out in front of my Ford car. Next day the Check Engine light comes on. Take it to the dealer and they say the brake module has failed and it is a really expensive replacement. Get the new one installed with a pretty expensive bill. Am driving home when the brake pedal is going down to the floor when stopping the car. Drove it back the next day and asked them if anyone bled the brakes. Car comes back at the end of the day with no more spongy brakes and no comments on why the pedal was going to the floor. 8 months goes by, and a letter comes in the mail saying there is a recall on the brake module. They have to remove all the DOT 3 brake fluid, flush and fill it with DOT 4, and test it for failures. Received one more recall letter saying if the newest module failed in a year, Ford would replace it, but beyond that I would have to pay for it.

One guy had a digital dashboard and it died. They had no idea how fast they were driving and when it was fixed they were not sure the Odometer was right. We pay the price for all this complexity. Which is funny, because there was an article a few months ago about how real buttons are preferred, over pressing computer screens in cars, to accomplish a task.
 
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