Thread: Wheel nuts - fit dry, or with neversieze?

Up to 80-90% of the torque being applied is just to overcome the frictional losses - this is both friction on the thread, and friction of the mating surfaces at the head. Only 10-20% goes into tensioning the bolt.

When you add some lubricant, you reduce the amount of friction on the thread and so less torque goes into overcoming this friction, and more torque goes into tensioning up the bolt which provides the clamping force.

The more tension that goes into the bolt, the closer you get to the yield point.

As a rough guide, adding a lubricant to the thread can reduce the frictional losses by up to 30-40%, and unless you reduce the torque being applied to compensate, this means you are adding more tension to the bolt itself.

You can recalculate the correct torque if you know the material specs and expected coefficient of friction. But very important to know the original grade to determine how close we are to the yield point before a lubricant is added.

Engine oil reduces the frictional losses the most (and we know a little bit of oil covers a large area), but some anti-seize products reduce friction less and are better suited.

If you do add a “little bit of lubricant”, I would probably just drop the torque to 120Nm.

Edit: and I have to stress - this is only an issue if the original studs are grade 8.8. If the original studs are grade 9.8 or 10.9, then 140Nm is well below the recommended dry torque.

Originally Posted by DiscoDB

Using a few drops of oil on wheel nuts is a practice commonly used in the trucking industry, primarily to overcome increased friction from dirt and minor damage.

I clean them if there is any crap on them.