Remove Lug Nuts for Front Brake Pads

Video Transcript

"MARK BLOCKER: Okay. Before we get started, I've got a tip for you and it can save you a lot of frustration and aggravation little ways down the road. When you jack the vehicle up, whether it's the front-end, front-wheel drive or a rear-wheel drive, the wheels are going to spin freely. An automatic transmission isn't going to lock those in place once both wheels are lifted off the ground and it makes it real difficult to break the lug nuts free. If you're using a mechanical wrench or a hand wrench to break the lug nuts free, you'll find that real difficult or near impossible to do without having somebody hold on the brake pedal or some way of keeping that wheel from moving while you're breaking the lug nuts free. So, at this time, we're going to go around and break the lug nuts free on the wheels that we're going to take off which are these two front wheels and we don't want to loosen them up, we're just going to break them free so when we get it up in the air, we can get them off at that point. Okay. So, before we can take the lug nuts off, the first thing we need to do is make sure the vehicle's in park and the emergency brake is set. In that way, when we try to loosen them, we just don't roll the car. The first thing we need to do before we pull the lug nuts off--this particular rim has got a center cap on there and we need to snap that center cap off and get it out of our way. Okay. So, we want to select the right size of socket for our nut which is three-quarter-inch or 19-millimeter. And with a star wrench like this, the way I found it, it's easiest to apply it and put equal torque with both hands and that keeps it centered on the lug nuts so you're avoiding that possibility of it twisting off in the rim and off the nut. This shouldn't be on by the--probably somewhere in the neighborhood around 90 pounds but somebody using the impact wrench can easily over tighten them and make them difficult to come off. The standard factory one that comes with the car is usually just a single-handle model and can be a little bit more difficult to get the extra torque sometimes. And we don't want to loosen anymore than that, about a half a turn is just far as you need to go and I always do it in a star pattern or back and forth crisscross whether I'm removing or tightening. Once again, just about half a turn 'cause we don't want to loosen them up and have that wheel started to slide up with the weight of the car on. I'm just cracking through about half a turn. Make sure you get each one. Now, we only want to crack the ones loose on the wheels that we're going to be removing. And so, we're doing front brakes. We're only going to do this to both front wheels. All you need to do is just repeat the procedure on the other side of the car. Same procedure you use on this side. We just want to apply it to other side on the front only. We don't need to loosen the rear, they're not coming off. So, please watch our next segment on jacking up the vehicle."