REMOVAL OF WHEEL NUT S/S DRESS COVERS

[Southern Cross]

I wanted to inspect and clean up the brake and front suspension and so need to remove the alloy wheels. These are 18 inch rims and the nuts have a stainless steel dress cap that clips over the nuts.
The LR wheel brace and levers in the supplied bag also have a purpose made cylindrical plastic tool that has an internal lip made to cover the dress pieces and so will click and then hold so the dress piece can be pulled straight out. Unfortunately the tool is broken and is useless. Until i locate another tool, is there a way to pull these dress caps without damaging them? Id like o do this job asap so any suggestions would be helpful.
Thanks
Brian

[kelvo]

You only need to remove the covers from the locking nuts.

You may not even still have locking nuts fitted, to work out if you have or not use the normal wheel brace and undo the nuts. If you find any that just spin they are locking nuts and stabbing a screw driver through the end of the cover and then lever it off. Cover will be stuffed, but it will be off ;)

[alien]

Each wheel should have 4 standard nuts and one lock nut.
The lock nut is the only one with a removable dress cover.
It has a concave dimple in it and the tool is for slipping over it.
A rag inside a set of multi grips should see this cover come off.


I took my lock nuts off as I predominantly do off road/touring trips and didn't want the hassles of the lock nut tool breaking on the side of a track somewhere remote.
If this has been done to your rig there will be no dimples in any of the caps.

[Ferret]

I was never able to remove the stainless cap from the nuts other than from the single lock nut on each wheel.

I might be wrong but I didn't think they actually came off the other nuts.

[d2dave]

I took my lock nuts off as I predominantly do off road/touring trips and didn't want the hassles of the lock nut tool breaking on the side of a track somewhere remote.


I did the same. But if you do be warned, if you have a vinyl cover over your spare you will not notice that there is also one there. I removed my four from the wheels and ditched the tool not knowing that the spare had one.

I was 800km from home when I found out.:(

[warren9981]

The stainless dress covers are not designed to come off the standard wheel nuts. If you do manage to get them off the wheel brace will no longer fit correctly and will be too loose.
The locking nuts have the concave dimple in the end and the plastic tool in the kit is used to remove these. If you send me a PM I can send you the plastic tool as I removed my locking nuts and replaced with standard nuts.

[Outback 1]

if you use the wheel brace on the lock nut covers you can wiggle them off without doing any damage

[Roverlord off road spares]

The Tyre place uses a hook made from an old welding rod, slides down the side and hooks on the lip of the the lock nut cover and pull to remove.

[Southern Cross]

Arh huh, so that's how it works. Thanks for the replies and thanks to Warren for the kind offered loan of the tool.

Brian

[p38arover]

Does your vehicle have locking wheel nuts, Brian? If not, leave the covers in place.

[warren9981]

Arh huh, so that's how it works. Thanks for the replies and thanks to Warren for the kind offered loan of the tool.

Brian

Not offering a loan.
You can have it if you want.
No use to me, I replaced the locking nuts.

[PhilipA]

I met a bloke in Longreach caravan park who had recently bought a D2 who proudly showed me how he had twisted off his covers and undone the nut on the spare with multigrips.
He was quite surprised when I told him about locking nuts and after a quick rummage through his bins we found the remover and key.

Jeeeesh!

Regards Philip A