I had the same problem a little over a week ago on my 2.5-ton... my
3/4" drive impact wrench wouldn't budge one of the inner lugs on a
rear axle. An hour of Liquid Wrench, hammer away with the impact
wrench, repeat, didn't budge it. What finally did the trick was
yanking the wheel back and forth HARD at the edge farthest from the
stuck lug nut (with the other lugs off). There was enough spring in
the wheel that the wheel could move enough to break the rust free, and
there's a lot of leverage from the far side of a 9.00x20!
I heartily recommend a suitable air-driven impact wrench. It doesn't
fix every problem, as I learned a week ago, and I still apply final
torque by hand (well, by foot... I have a calibrated band of
electrical tape on the breaker bar... if I stand on it with the bar
horizontal, the torque will be around the required 300-320 foot-pounds
that my 2.5-ton wants), but the impact wrench generally makes removing
wheels pretty painless, and speeds up installing them. For
installation, I crank down the torque setting below the final value I
want and just use it to seat the wheel. I then apply final torque with
a torque wrench (on my little 4Runner), or with my calibrated foot (on
the 2.5-ton), after putting enough weight back on the wheel to keep it
from turning.
Another nice point is that with an impact wrench, you can pull the
wheels off after jacking them up, without loosening them first while
they're on the ground. Just be extra careful to set the direction
right, because if you set it on "tighten" you can strip the threads
right off without breaking a sweat!
-- Mark J. Blair, KE6MYK <mblair1@home.net> PGP 2.6.2 public key available from http://pgp.ai.mit.edu/ Web page: http://www.qsl.net/ke6myk/ DO NOT SEND ANY UNSOLICITED COMMERCIAL EMAIL TO THIS SITE=== To unsubscribe from the mil-veh mailing list, send the single word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of a message to <mil-veh-request@skylee.com>.