Protecting the precious Compomotives (and other wheels)

[mbw]

So, This summer I have to park my rig in an undisclosed and undesirable location for longer than I would like, which means I got a bit paranoid about security of the rig.

One thing I wanted to do was throw some locking wheel nuts on. This proved to be a little trickier than I had hoped. First I tried some Gorilla brand duplex acorn style locking wheel nuts, but they did not work with compos and I am pretty sure they wouldn't work with OE wheels. The part the security bit was supposed to grab onto went out of reach once they thread on a bit.

So next I started looking for McGard style. I also wanted black. I found some on ebay.

LINK: 06-16 Range Rover LR3 LR4 Range Rover Sport Gloss Black Wheel Lock Lug Nut Set

Of course being LR parts, they are $180 bucks rather than ~$40 like the gorillas.

They arrived today and I think they will be perfect. They fit, they are black, a bit more shiny than the other wheel nuts, but will be close enough. AND the thing that made me the most happy... they are not just the pattern on the end, they also have a collar around the outside which spins, so you are NOT able to use a bolt extractor to get them off! Great design.

The key should be hidden in your rig somewhere since a determined thief will just smash a window and go looking for it. It does fit into the included factory wheel lug wrench which folds up and goes into the kit bag. (might not be the most secure place, but its all tucked away at least)

LR part no. VPLWW0093

The black solid (non capped) wheel nuts im using are:
LINK: 20 GORILLA RANGE ROVER 14x1.5 OEM OE STOCK FACTORY WHEELS RIM MAG LUG NUTS BLACK

Now on to the spare wheel. All a theif has to do is cut the winch cable and they can take the spare!

snip snip... (Caution! my wheel doesn't fall on my head because 265/65R18!... but yours might.)

Happens a lot from what I read in the U.K. So the folks on the disco4.co.uk forums have a product they use call and RLD spare wheel protector.

So.. that is one less thing to worry about... as much.

 

[Quijote]

Let me just say that I will never again own those pentalobe style wheel locks. I had a set of those on my V70R and one of them broke. It had to be drilled out. Needless to say, it is not easy to do since they are safety bolts (had a hardness test done at the lab at work and it registered at over 60 HRC!!!). The company sent me a fixture and 4 cobalt drill bits. They all dulled (twice - I had them resharpened) and I barely made a dent. I had to buy a high end corded drill and several carbide tile cutting bits (all that would work and super brittle, so they kept breaking) and cut through the case hardened portion by hand (brutal surgeon-legel work). It cost me multiple afternoons, and dozens of dollars. Never doing that again. The wheel locks I got on my E46 BMW from the factory delivery in Germany were great.

A part of the problem is the small engagement. The depth of the pattern on those locks is super shallow and this makes it easy to torque out and potentially damage the bolt. Over time, after multiple removals, they start to get rounded off making more and more likely that your wheel will be trapped in there.

I am a mechanical design engineer and I gotta tell you I learned all I'll ever need to learn about drilling through hard metals with that experience. I'm done with it. That, and customer service sucked. They asked me to please send back their fixture. When I was done I sent them the Home Depot receipts for the $60 or so dollars (amounting for only a portion of what I spend it bits) saying I would return their precious fixture (a simple, turned alignment tool) once I was refunded. Never heard from them again, so I still have the fixture.

Were I not handy, a dealership would have charged me over $1k+ to remedy the situation (destroy wheel + labor + new wheel). And considering the amount of time I spent, that would have been cheap.

I guess one positive is that if you put those locks on, you wheels will not get stolen. That's for damn sure.

Below is the style I had with my BMW. As you can see, full depth engagement with no chance of torque-out. Plus, in the unlikely event of failure, less material to drill through.

 

[umbertob]

Thanks for the posts, very useful as always. I thought about locking lug nuts for a second myself when I got the Compos originally. Heard a horror story similar to Quijote's from a friend and changed my mind. He had a flat tire on his Suburban with fancy 22s while on a road trip and, for the life of him, he just couldn't find the nut's key when the AAA tow truck driver showed up. After being towed to a shop, he had to find a hotel to stay overnight because the shop couldn't figure out how to remove the thing. The following day, the shop pretty much destroyed his rim in an attempt to remove the lug. Ruined his vacation, and all because of a routine flat tire.

While I realize the Compos are expensive and may look purposeful and therefore beautiful to us Land Rover owners "in the know", if I were a wheel thief I would probably look for something else to steal, something with a higher bling factor from a car with suspensions that don't require a friggin' shop jack to lift a wheel off the ground. Besides, mine are so scuffed up by now, I doubt anyone would want them anymore... I'll take my chances without locking lugs.

 

[Quijote]

(I edited my post above for awful typos and also added a tiny bit more info)

I agree with umbertob. I no longer lock my wheels no matter how fancy. Admittedly I live and work in a nice area, but still.

And yeah, good luck to the thief who tries to jack up an LR4 with any regular jack. lol

 

[mbw]

I agree with you guys in general. I don't plan to leave them on all the time and I would never allow them to be 'worked on' by a shop. I will use them for specific situations and I will always remove and install them myself with utmost mechanical sympathy.

I am happy that my wheels wont be stolen.