[itikia]

Surprise surprise, I go and try to put on my winters yesterday and the locking bolts won't loosen. One of the bolt keys snaped inside the lock bolt. We managed to remove the broken piece. Luckily I had a second key but the bolt won't budge. The second key is on the way to breaking also, I can see the threads starting to twist.

I put the summers back in March and torqued the bolts to 90 ft.lb. The last time the car was serviced was for its first scheduled service at BMW. I'm wondering if they would have removed the wheels to inspect the brakes?

I've got a 2014 335i X-drive MSport 2 pkg.

Any ideas on how to get these things off??

[Daftasabrush]

The stock BMW ones are McGard pieces of crap and it's very easy to chew them up. I had the same problem on an old Volvo of mine, I ended up taking my car to a scrap yard and they managed it (figured they'd have ways and means of removing all kinds of wheel locks).

[Fronzdan]

Dealers usually have a special socket that's made to grip the edges and get those off. Destroys the locks in the process. I suspect tire places have em too.

[_bdiddyb_]

The asshole who sold me tires used the air gun to tightened my lug nuts. The lug wrench actually bent when I tried to remove the nut to work on the brakes. I had to drill out the nut and destroyed the bolt in process.

[itikia]

Originally Posted by _bdiddyb_

The asshole who sold me tires used the air gun to tightened my lug nuts. The lug wrench actually bent when I tried to remove the nut to work on the brakes. I had to drill out the nut and destroyed the bolt in process.

We contemplated using the lock nut remover since I didn't have extra bolts on hand. Drilling is the worst case scenario, it will definitely work though.

[Dippydo]

I always cringe when I look at a tire shop and they are using an impact air gun on them with a regular socket. lazy people

[itikia]

So after an afternoon of work I finally got the locking wheel bolts off the car. 2 of the bolts were overtorqued and breaking keys.

The first option was using locking wheel nut removers. Outside of scuffing the inside of the rim they accomplished nothing.



I ten moved onto my plan b, drill the suckers out. I purchased some cobalt drill bits, small to large sizes, and cutting fluid.

The idea was to drill out the centers without destroying the locking bolt teeth. First obstacle was drilling out the center pin.



So I took one of the broken wheel lock keys and drilled out the center from the inside out. I would later use this as a drill guide to drill out the center pin on the bolt.



The cobalt drill bits went through the key like butter, but I took my time making sure to cool the bit and use more cutting fluid periodically. Now off to the bolt, once I was able to start drilling out the center pin using the guide, I was able to drill the pin directly. With the pin out of the way I continued drilling about half inch deep. I progressively used a large bit to drill out material. I was anticipating that after the drilling was done the head would pop off. But my mechanic friend suggested I try loosing after the drilling, and sure enough the bolt came loose.



I would imaging once enough material came out, the pressure on the bolt must have released hence why they were able to come out.

I'll be using regular bolts going forward, no more POS locking wheel bolts.