How to Remove Spinning Lug Nut Caps

Hi, I'm Mike from 1AAuto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years! We're dedicated to delivering quality auto parts, expert customer service, and fast and free shipping, all backed by our 100% satisfaction guarantee. So visit us at 1AAuto.com, your trusted source for quality auto parts.

In this video we're going to be working with our 2006 Chrysler 300. We have a very common problem on this vehicle in which the chrome lug caps which are actually decorative on a lot of these cars, have swollen from water being inside of them and loosened up on the lug nut, meaning that they just spin without actually removing our lug. We're going to show you how to deal with that and get it off without damaging your lug nut, so you can continue using it or replace it with a higher quality replacement part.

If you like this video, please click subscribe. We have a ton more information on this and many other vehicles. And if you ever need parts for your car, you can follow the link down in the description over to 1AAuto.com.

Here are the items you'll need for this repair: sockets, ratchet, breaker bar, chisel, hammer

Now when working on our 2006 Chrysler 300, I was trying to remove one of our lug nuts to get the wheel off, and these chrome caps are prone to spinning and swelling; so I tapped our socket on there, and our lug cap is spinning but the lug nut itself is not coming off.

Now when this happens, you can just try to really hammer that socket on there, but it's going to make it really difficult to remove that nut from the socket later, and you'll only run into this problem again when removing your wheel. So to make this process easier and to make that lug nut usable, as long as we didn't round it off in that process, you'll want a small, sharp chisel and a hammer.

Place the chisel on this little bulge on the end of the cap. Tap your way through it, and then start tapping up toward one of the flat surfaces. Try to keep that chisel nice and flat. Work your way along the edge of the lug. Now you'll want to put the chisel on one of the flat portions of the lug, between that and the chrome cap. Tap to the back of the lug nut to lift it up to split it. Then we'll do it again on the other side. You may just have to keep working around it, peeling that chrome up. Once the chrome cracks, you can remove that swollen, broken cap, and you'll want to go down about one millimeter on the socket size - in this case it's a 20 - and remove your lug nut.

Check the edges. You can see that ours are just a little round at the very end, but the rest of it is okay. Remove this. This is the gasket that they tried to use to keep all the water out of there to keep that from swelling. You can see how well that works. With these nice flat edges, we have some sharp corners down at the end here, so this lug nut is still usable. If you'd like or if you're in a pinch, and you can replace it with a new chrome one later. Otherwise, using a lug nut like this is perfectly fine as long as you use the right socket and torque it appropriately.

Thanks for watching. Visit us at 1AAuto.com for quality auto parts, fast and free shipping, and the best customer service in the industry.