Wheel REALLY stuck on hub

[Håkon Mathias Bergvik Trulsen]

To begin at the beginning, I was going to upgrade the front brakes on my 1979 Opel Kadett C. The brakes didn’t fit under my 13” wheels.
So I called up my sister, witch I knew had a set of 15”steel wheels from an Opel Astra that she scrapped last year laying around, witch I knew had the same stud pattern and center bore. So she let me borrow the wheels.
The wheels fit fine on the rear of my car, so I went to fit them on the front. They went on without any problems, fit it on, got it flat to the hub flange (or so I thought), and so I ran the nuts down with my impact gun (witch has a torque limiter, set to 100Nm).

This is when things went downhill.
I noticed the tire rubbed a bit on the shock. The rim fit fine, it was just the relatively massive 195 wide tires that rubbed. Anyway, when I tried to remove the wheel it was stuck. I tried the classic kick to the tire, I tried hammering the tire, both front and back. I tried putting the nuts back on loosely and drove around the neighborhood, and when that didn’t work, I took an angle iron, just under 2 meters long, jammed it behind the lower ball joint and pried against the wheel with all my might, but to no avail.

Long story short, the wheel is REALLY stuck to the hub. I think the manufacturing tolerances stacked up the wrong way, combined with a bit of smudge on the hub is what caused this.

Taking the spindle out and hammering it off the wheel would be easy, but I can’t pull the spindle off the car, because the brake caliper (fixed dual piston type) holds the brake disk in place. Getting the whole knuckle off the car won’t happen without taking both control arms out either due to the ball joints being pressed in the arms, and there being no room to get them out of the spindle either.

I’ve thought a bit of finding a large puller thingy, but it will probably damage the wheel. Before I go with that route, I want to know I’ve tried all other options that doesn’t involve trashing the wheel and or tire.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Topic

[Richard Kirshy]

The wheel is either bound up on the lug studs or the center hub
If it is bound on the studs, you might try partially screwing on the lug nuts and drive them out.
If it is bound up on the center hub that tightly, the only method that may offer some option would be to heat up the center area of the wheel and see if it expanse enough to free it self.

[Håkon Mathias Bergvik Trulsen]

It’s definitely the center hub it’s stuck on. I’ve thought about heat as well, but I don’t have access to a blowtorch. I might bite the bullet and buy one if my brother-in-law can’t magic something up tomorrow.

[Richard Kirshy]

Might try a heat gun before going at it with a torch.

[Håkon Mathias Bergvik Trulsen]

I will try that as well. I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow.

[Håkon Mathias Bergvik Trulsen]

My brother-in-law, being an industrial mechanic / magician, managed to get the wheel off.

He tried most of the things I tried, and some creative new things first though. For example, he made a makeshift puller, by sticking the hooks of a set of spring compressors through the holes in the wheel on opposing sides, and placing a pry bar across the other hooks. He then used a brake caliper compressor tool between the pry bar and the hub. My guess is that we put a good few tonnes of pressure through the setup, we had to quit it when we noticed the pry bar started to bow.

Anyways, the thing that got the wheel off, was when we noticed that with the new bend in the pry bar, it could reach through the holes in the steel rim, and be hammered between the wheel and the hub flange. It surprisingly moved the wheel on the second hit.

I’m still puzzled by why the wheel got stuck in the first place. Of course I should have been paying attention when running down the lug nuts, probably not used the impact gun, not to mention that there was a bit of smudge on the hub. but still, these are Opel wheels, with the correct stud pattern, the wheels even came of an Astra, witch is technically a continuation of the Kadett line, and they still have what turns out to be less than half a millimeter to small center bore.
I tried the wheel back on by hand after removing absolutely all smudge and rust on the hub and the bore in the wheel, and it wasn’t any closer to fitting.
Does anyone have any idea of where the size difference of the hub comes from?

[Author]

Replies