When I was in college, I worked as a tire installer and installed thousands of tires on all sorts of foreign and domestic vehicles. I found that not only were the bolts on European vehicles very high quality but I also never saw one ever get buggered up like the studs and nuts on some American cars. I think part of the problem is that the studs and nuts are incredibly cheap on many vehicles. The lug nuts on my Hyundai were so cheap that the outer sleeve on the lug nuts peeled apart the first time I removed a tire from my car. I replaced all of the lug nuts with solid steel acorn nuts. BTW, the steel wheels on the old Mercedes and Audis were so good that, often, I did not have to add any weight to get a perfectly balanced wheel when I installed Michelin tires.
- Home