How to Install the Wheel & Tighten the Lug Nuts on Your Car

Video Transcript

"Hi! My name is Nate McCullough on behalf of expertvillage.com. In this clip we are going to talk about the proper way to reinstall your vehicle's wheel and to snug your lug nuts. Take it and roll the tire over this direction. The stud I like to line up first is the bottom one. Just pretty much look through the wheel hole, find the stud and aim right for it. There you go. Once you have the wheel on there, I like to take and use my foot to hold it in place and then take and start the bottom lug nut. Once you have the bottom lug nut run down a little bit, the rest of them will stay pretty much where you put them. When you are running these down by hand, there is no particular order that you have to do them in just as long as you remember you get them all on there. All right. Now that we have them all started, I'll take my preferred tool for this type of work, the 4-way, slide it on our stud there and we are just going to spin them down hand tight. Now in this step of the procedure, you are going to want to use a pattern. We are going to start here and from there, we have two choices to go to. Either one is going to be the next furtherest away from the one we tightened. We are going for a Penta Star Pattern. We are going to choose this one up here. From there our pattern has been determined. The next furtherest one away that we haven't tightened yet is this lug nut here. What that pattern does is ensure that you get the vehicle's wheel seated flatly; the next furtherest one away. If you were to just start on one lug nut and run it down all the way tightened and torqued, it is possible that that wheel will bind on the steering hub and not sit against the mating flange flatly; it would sit at an angle. As you drive the vehicle, that angle is going to cause it to be out of balance you'll notice; a high speed vibration. Once you've got them all snugged down in their proper order, you are ready to torque the lugs. "