I was visiting with a neighbor whose daughter is visiting from a college up North in the Snow Belt… The daughter’s Toyota Camry had snow tires mounted on the front on steel rims. She said she bought the snow ties and wheel from a local garage near her campus…
The garage had used the same lug nuts that fitted the allow wheel to mount the steel wheel… They are not the same design…
The Toyota lug nuts do not have the same seat type… Both Front wheels were somewhat loose and the Lug Nuts for the Alloy Wheels have “shoulders” that are too small for the Steel Wheels and were eating their way through…
My neighbor immediately went to an auto parts store and replaced the lug nuts… I advised him to take the car in and have the steel wheels inspected, the Lug Holes may be too wallowed out to be safe…
Let this be a warning to others… I honestly never thought about this previously, as I do not swap out Snow Tires and Wheels here in Virginia…
For crying out loud. That is the same thing as putting new tires only on the front of a vehicle. She either needs rear tires to match or just put the other tires back on . The chance of the rear breaking loose and having very little control of the vehicle is very high.
And just incase someone wants to dispute Nevada’s post thinking that is a one off case, he is what my 2023 Tacoma owners manual says, if you look, even the pictures are different…
I am more worried when I see a spare installed with the lugs on backwards…
Now you do have to watch the Euro vehicles, I know some of the Mercedes Benz uses a different set (included) of wheel lug studs for the spare tire… different length…
Let’s drag up the past with this old posting of mine from 5-years ago. It might bring you a laugh about my experience with Lug Nuts when I was a naive teenager in the '60s with my first car…
It’s not a short read, so feel free to ignore it if you do not like “Long Reads…” as it adds nothing to the discussion, other than a humorous side note…
I did not see Volvo’s post as flaming you. I would not expect someone from Virginia to be conversant with the ins and outs of snow tires But whorver sold the snow tires up north should have known better.
I agree that the possibility of putting tires with more traction in the front is a bigger concern. I think the safety concern of that is greater than the possibility of a front wheel coming off. If you have positraction, the snow tires can be put on one side!
Putting matched tires on one side of the vehicle won’t create a safety issue where front traction is greater than the rear. It could lead to imbalanced breaking, and maybe causing the vehicle to turn to one side a little, but it wouldn’t be anywhere as bad as the front to back issue.
Should I worry about sports cars with staggered tires? Or 20”wheels on front and 21” wheels on rear? They may or may not have same OD on tires as well.
Yes, but I know that was a rhetorical question…lol
Basically, staggard tires are more about the extra width on the rear for traction under hard acceleration, a lot of staggard tires are very close in overall diameter, that being said, you have more chances for tire rub while turning if the wider tires or bigger wheels are on the front…
