It would be interesting to chat with the person who thought it’d be a good idea to cap steel lug nuts with aluminum.





These nuts distort, swell, and corrode, in an inconsistent way. Designed to be 19mm, the size ranges in fractional increments from 18mm to 21mm. The factory-provided lug wrench was useless. A speed wrench was useless.


This was my daughter’s Ford Escape. She bought replacement lug nuts (about $140 total) and had the local tire shop replace them all. They said they deal with this problem a lot.

It would have be like totally awesome to be unable to change a flat tire and be 100s of miles from a shop that could do the work.

It’s a known problem that Ford refuses to address.

The Curious Case of Ford's Swollen Lug Nuts

 

If nothing else perhaps this will alert other Escape owners or anyone with those type lug nuts to deal with the problem ASAP and DIY in order prevent such instances.

 

I’ve recently discovered that it’s not just Ford.

Highly recommend making sure a lug nut wrench fits every nut, and replace Al-capped nuts with aftermarket steel nuts.

 

I think the thin shells are stainless. I've had a bunch of these and just found mine are fubar'd on my '17 due to the dealer tire rotation. I had a 21mm socket that fit tight. Now I need 22mm. Next stop will be some aftermarket jobs......

Ford and a bunch of other makers use these things. They "create a vacuum".

 

Yup...the bog 3 were famous for doing this back in the late 70's and throughout the 80s.... the Germans and Japanese followed our lead as well (on their lower end cars!

 

The covers are aluminum.