Alloy wheel centre caps

Neil_Sedaka

Anyone know a good place to buy centre caps and wheel nuts in Dublin?
I presume you need "special" wheel nuts for alloys and the ones from your old steel wheels won't do?

Seth Brundle

Regarding nuts - there are different sizes and threads so go somewhere general like Halfords. Any nut for the car will fit irrespective of whether it is holding an alloy or steel rim on.

Regarding centre caps - for what car?

Neil_Sedaka

The guy that sold me the wheels says that ordinary nuts will eventually "pull through" the alloy!

The centre caps need to fit wheels by RW Alloys, Ghent, Belgium
Size is 6J x 14H2

Thanks for the replies.

the evil belly

i would assume the steel nuts would be harder then the alloy and therefore damage them. nice shiney alloy nuts can't hurt anyway.

prospect

My megane has alloys, with shiny wheel nuts. But the spare wheel is an ordinary steel wheel, and it uses different wheel nuts, brass coloured. There is a warning sticker saying not to mix them up?
There is obviously a good reason for this, but I dunno what that is?

Seth Brundle

I don't think there is. The nuts need to be tightened to a specific torque - any tighter and you risk damaging alloy wheels. However, assuming the nuts are tightened correctly, I can't see any other probelm.

CJhaughey

Alloy wheel nuts usually differ from steel ones in the shoulder of the nut which contacts the wheel.
If you hold the nut up and have a look at the part of the nut which contacts the wheel some are rounded and some are conical.
IME the steel wheels usually have conical shoulders and the alloys rounded shoulders, I think it has to do with alloy and sharp corners= stress fracture whereas a hemispherical fit has a nice radius.

Borzoi

prospect wrote:

My megane has alloys, with shiny wheel nuts. But the spare wheel is an ordinary steel wheel, and it uses different wheel nuts, brass coloured. There is a warning sticker saying not to mix them up?
There is obviously a good reason for this, but I dunno what that is?

It's likely that the nuts are different lengths to suit the thickness of the wheel - probably longer for the alloy, and shorter for the steel.

Scruff

oh dear. i didnt know this and have had alloys since february. nobody told me about special nuts. the only special nuts i got were lock nuts and put one on each wheel.