Having suffered though this twice now I'm sufficiently motivated to raise the issue. Most folks here are likely beyond this as a potential problem but if you just bought your truck and haven't yet removed the road wheels, do yourself a favor and do it now in your driveway before you end up on the side of the road and are SOL.

Factory torque spec is 103 ft/lb for the wheel nuts on a Disco 2. Both of my Rovers must have had their wheels last installed by a jackass at the tire shop with a sideways baseball hat on his head and an impact gun in his hand. Last night I broke a 2' breaker bar at the swivel due to over tightened wheel nuts. I had removed the driver's front the other night when I had to pull the steering box, it took a MAC impact gun to remove the nuts, followed by a good drenching with PB Blaster and about 10 minutes with a rubber mallet to get the wheel off the hub due to galvanic corrosion. On the side of the road with a flat tire and a bottle jack under the axle is not the time to find out your wheels are frozen on. I did the two rear wheels on Tuesday night in order to bleed the brakes, and it was the same annoying process on each. And last night I did the passenger front and broke my breaker bar.

All in I spent at least 2 hours total to get the wheels off the truck. The same thing happened in April of 2018 when I got my first Disco. Had I not done this preventatively and then gotten a flat out on the road I would have needed a flatbed to get the truck home. Once the wheels were off, a couple minutes with a wire brush on the hubs followed by a liberal amount of Never Seize, and a dab on the wheel studs before torquing them to 103 ft/lbs, and the wheels again come of smoothly.

Trust me, if you haven't had the wheels of your truck yet, especially if you live somewhere that has winter, you'd do well to attempt it when you don't *need* to and have an assortment of tools to help you.

 

This is great info.. I couldn't believe how stuck mine were. I literally was looking for a set screw or something on the first one.. I literally sat on my behind and kicked the sides of tire tires forever.. They pop off eventually..

 

I had one set stuck on so bad when we first got my wife's ride... and let me be clear, I do NOT recommend this... but the only way I could get them off was to loosen all the lug nuts and go for a *very* spirited drive around the field.

Again, not recommended. I am not responsible if you do. I had no other option.

 

You can position your breaker bar pointing not quite straight down so that lowering your Disco with your jack causes the weight of the truck to push the breaker bar about 1/8 of a turn if you are out in the wild in a real pinch need of loosening a stuck lug nut.

 

I've done this with other vehicles but on the Disco it didn't look like it would allow for much movement on the hub even with loosened wheel nuts. The barrels on the wheel nuts only allow for about a half millimeter of travel and the hub mount is a good 10mm deep. Nice to know it works but I think a mallet is probably the most efficient way to loosen them.

 

@ahab yea those clowns with the unregulated impact guns do that to everything. My wife has a little ford fusion, I took it on to my local tire guy for a flat repair, slow leak, he said I would never gotten the tire off the lug nuts were so tight.

 

I even tried an 8# sledge before moving to this option. No idea what they did to get the hub seized up so tight, but that's what mine took.

 

Agree w/OP about a 'dab' of anti-seize on the studs. It is always recommended to never grease or anti-seize the studs, but I have done it for years and never had a wheel fall off or nut loosen from a stud. BUT, for those wheels (not the Disco) that use bolts instead of studs, never anti-seize them.....

 

One of my lugs was so welded to the stud that it caused the entire stud to rotate in the hub, meaning that I couldn't loosen the nut at all. I ended up having to cut the wheel off with a grinder, sawzall, and various chisels. Would have been completely impossible on the side of the road.

 

WOW! Holy