WTF? That is all.
WTF? That is all.
Probably just the plastic plugs that cover the head of the lug bolt. Our Jetta has them, they just pop out, I'm not real sure what their point/purpose is though.
In reply to bigdaddylee82:
Seriously? When did the sight of a lug nut become so offensive?
Sometime in the late 80's....
I had a 1990 GMC 2500 pickup with plastic lug nut covers that threaded onto the outside of the lug nuts.
My BMW k1200s had torx lugnuts. The k1300s probably does too, but I just got it last Friday and honestly haven't looked yet.
Nowadays, it is considered bad form to show your nuts.
RoughandReady wrote: Seriously? When did the sight of a lug nut become so offensive?
My '84 Scirocco had black plastic lug bolt caps on it from the factory. You had to use a little tool from the toolkit to pop them off before you could undo the lugs.
RoughandReady wrote: In reply to bigdaddylee82: Seriously? When did the sight of a lug nut become so offensive?
When did people notice the lug nuts of a car?
As a guy who spent quite a portion of the 80's and 90's removing swollen chrome capped nuts from everything American, I say the plastic covers are a big improvement.
Once again, Pontiac Aztec was ahead of it's time. My former son-in-law's Aztec had some sort of plastic cover over its' lugnuts. IIRC they were shaped like lugnuts.
When I was doing a cross-train in the tire shop at work I got to learn all about the different weird ways manufacturers have of covering lug nuts.
The little guys that require a tool are a PITA when the owner of the car has lost the tool.
Wonder how many would care that my solution was always a small flathead screw driver
(answer: few. Enthusiasts don't seem to get tires at Costco)
Are these Torx caps only for covering the lug nuts, or is there a Torx head actually cast into the head of the lug nut? I've never seen either before.
Probably the most unusual lug nut I have is a JDM aluminum lug nut set that has four heptagonal (7-sided) nuts and a matching socket.
Normal engineering practice encourages solving the problem with the fewest parts and tools possible, German engineering started to drift the other way about 25 years ago.
Man, I think acorn lugnuts are one of the coolest looking individual pieces on a car. If anything they should be more prominent.
German engineers (or more likely, the marketer-engineers that seem to drive everything) probably look at them and go "hey, if they realize that fits into a socket they might try fixing other stuff themselves too. We gotta put an end to that." Thus, the lug bolt condom.
In reply to RexSeven:
There's nothing "Torx" about the actual lug bolt on ours. First time I ever tried to take one of the plastic covers off I stuck a ~T30 bit in one, turned it, and it quickly became a round hole. They just pop off, with a little flat screw driver like SnowMongoose said, or I use one of my little pick tools with a 90 degree bend on the end, stick it in the opening, hook the edge and pull straight out, they pop right off, and I don't worry about scratching the wheel.
The lug bolt they cover has a "hollow" head. Not sure why on that either, cost savings? The little plastic "torx" cap covers the hollow head bolt.
I recall quite vividly that my wife's Audi A6 had these annoying little grey plastic covers. The factory tool kit included a frustrating little pick with which to poke ineffectively at them. I quickly engineered a little puller that slipped into the recess and engaged the lip on both sides and pulled those suckers right off.
The Neon had some interesting ones that held the wheel cover on. The I.D. threaded onto the actual lugnut, the O.D. of which was threaded.
Cotton wrote: My BMW k1200s had torx lugnuts. The k1300s probably does too, but I just got it last Friday and honestly haven't looked yet.
Don't all BMW bikes have all torx everything?
VW Beetles had plastic lug covers on the dealer offered Sport Wheels back in'74.
https://www2.cip1.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=C16-133-173
SO ahead of their time, especially in styling . . .
Streetwiseguy wrote: As a guy who spent quite a portion of the 80's and 90's removing swollen chrome capped nuts from everything American, I say the plastic covers are a big improvement.
those chrome lug nut covers are awesome... when they come off and get wedged inside the socket, you are left with a nut that is neither metric or SAE.. and GM was using them as far back as the early 70's on anything that had wheels with exposed lug nuts..
M2Pilot wrote: Once again, Pontiac Aztec was ahead of it's time. My former son-in-law's Aztec had some sort of plastic cover over its' lugnuts. IIRC they were shaped like lugnuts.
the Aztec designers just took them out of the GM parts bin. they were (and still are) used on everything from the lowliest gas sipping economy car up to the flagship Corvette..
VW also used one internal star security lug bolt per wheel on a lot of the early to mid '00s vehicles with aluminum wheels. They came with a key that fit the regular lug wrench.
The Saturn SL2 that we had used plastic lugnut-shaped lugnut covers. In fairness, they were used to secure the plastic wheel covers to the wheel.
novaderrik wrote:Streetwiseguy wrote: As a guy who spent quite a portion of the 80's and 90's removing swollen chrome capped nuts from everything American, I say the plastic covers are a big improvement.those chrome lug nut covers are awesome... when they come off and get wedged inside the socket, you are left with a nut that is neither metric or SAE.. and GM was using them as far back as the early 70's on anything that had wheels with exposed lug nuts..
'05-up RWD Chrysler cars where the worst about this. The lug nuts would corrode under the chrome cap causing them to swell so much that you can't get the stock lug wrench on them. My brother-in-law's in-laws found that out the hard way when they got a flat in the middle of nowhere in their '08 300 (that was only four years old at the time, and always garage kept).
^I had totally forgotten about that, but I experienced the same thing with my old 06 Magnum. I replaced a few of the lug nuts due to them not being the proper size anymore. 
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