any extra ideas on howto remove the rear hub nuts tried bar tried rattle gun etc

wd40 then soak.
after that breaker bar with bit of pipe on it.
oxy and heat the nut.

have been spraying with crc daily next step iguess will be oxy will that damage the shafts though or will it be fine if the heat is concentrated on the nut

Settle down there barls! You shouldn't need to be doing any kind of heating and quenching work, unless they haven't been loosened since the 1970s. WD40 is definitely a good start though. When they're really stuck, I use a long breaker bar, with wheel chocks (lengths of timber sleeper) either side of the wheel. Leave the handbrake off and the car out of gear. Knock the split pin out and fit your socket firmly. Then, I rock the car backwards and forwards against the wheel chocks using the breaker bar on the axle nut. When the car is rolling down off the side of the chock I pull upwards on the bar with full force against the wheel's direction of travel. This may need to be repeated several times but usually gets the job done. In between if it's really stuck and I get tired then I will give it a few blasts with the rattle gun.

hey waveman as ive said tried rattle gun tried bar id say its time for heat

How long is your bar though? Go bigger and longer, I say. A good metre or more of extension bar will beat a rattle gun any day in my experience.

oxy on the nut is a last ditch effort mate,
just be happy i didnt just post this one as per the gun busters way


but seriously most loosen well before the use of an oxy.

yeah its all about tools and technique. Get a solid (no flex) breaker bar about 1.5m away from the nut. Use a strong RHS in betwen the wheel nuts on a diagonal to the ground with the wheel removed. This way as you rotate ere is no movement and all the force is applied to the nut. Once i couldn't do it because i had not bout a big enough socket and i had to go to the local vw place. He got me to sit in the car ouof gear with my foot firmly on the pedal and he put the breaker bar on near horozontal and gave a smalljump on the breaker and crack the tension was overcome. 36mm and 3/4" drive no adaptors

Average adult weight on a 1.8m extension will remove the nut unless there is a problem. Then heat.

Or just find a torquemeister which will get if off no problem. I donated mine to club VW sydney.

x2 for heat.

I've had to get the hot axe on some of mine, especially if the thread is abit ordinary.

Go to any tool shop of good repute and purchase a flogging spanner, no need to heat it, just a couple of hits with a 4LB lump hammer.

You can flog 7 shades of shit out of it with the BFH you can find, but it the threads are abit manky there's a good chance you can ruin the axles.


Ask me how I know

Looks like they were over torqued to begin with.

just replaced a wheel cylinder on my '60 beetle, nut would NOT move. Ended up using large jemmy bar wedged between two wheel bolts and floor then a 3/4 drive 36mm socket with tee-bar and on that two metres of 50mm waterpipe, could not move it by hand so stopped for a cuppa then in disgust hung from a shed rafter and bounced on the pipe and FINALLY it moved! I thought the car would fall off the stands! Now I have to do the other side so hopefully it will move too, my next shot would have been heat. In an earlier life working in a mine I watched a skilled fitter carefully remove a large nut off a warman pump faceplate mounting bolt using a gas-axe with zero damage to the male thread but I wouldn't attempt that on an axle!

when I was 18 (and thats a long time ago) and before the days of the internet and specialised tool shopping at your fingertips I bought a 3/8" drive socket to suit the wheel hub nut and got a 150 mm length of massive flat bar steel welded to it as a flogging tag. With the wheel still on the hub, and with the tyre on the ground, I put the tool on the nut and whack the tag downwards with a gympie hammer (mallet) to break the bond. Sometimes I have to hold the tool on the nut with my (steel capped) boot otherwise it slips slightly and burrs the nut.

Having a crappy old wheel and tyre on the hub helps to absorb any impact down through the tyre, and not through the bearing etc.

Works for me....

Its the best way to break the initial resistance ,breaker bars and lumps of pipe flex's to much and a lot of time you cannot generate enough torque to break the nut, with the flogging spanner it looses nothing in the translation, we use them at work all the time to loosen nuts that nut runner's and rattle guns do not look at even 1" drive one's.

Flogging spanners are great maybe for crappy mining equipment that you don't own or as a last resort when your miles from anywhere but I certainly don't recommend thier use in this aplication. Maybe for a course military thread like Whitworth which was specifically designed for rough handling etc but IMO not to be used on the fine thread and hard axle of a VW rear hub nut. I've undone more of these than I need to remember, my 5' heavy wall pipe and 3/4 socket ALWAYS come through. (maybe the one above in Joels may have required some heat but age, over tension and corosion eventually have some effect)

Both sides of my bug did that, I suspect the VW garage that the lady I bought it from used to get work done at would have probably over torqued them with the rattle gun, then years of driving on dirt roads had it's effect.

But aside from that bolting my angle iron to the drum and using my 3/4 sydchrome socket and breaker bar always gets them undone.

Sometimes it takes leaving the wheel on and someone stepping on the brakes and all my weight on the bar but it gets it done

ok this is a kombi first time apart in 35 years...that ring spanner is 2foot long and i've got 8foot of box section on it. I also have a bar bolted to the hub to stop it rotating.

it creaked and groaned but it gave in



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Yep, kombi's are worse. Bigger axle and rarely undone......I think I've used a hot spanner on two or three bus axles.

It amazes me how these nuts can be torqued up so tight but the thread doesn't strip out of the nut!

The type of thread you could use a flogging spanner on would not make any difference when breaking the initial resistance, as long as the car is out of gear with the hand brake off and the wheels chocked correctly no force would be transmitted to the drive train, but do not use them to torque up drive nut as you can easly strip the thread as shown in the above photo, only use a torque wrench to apply the correct torque as specified by volkswagen, I am a senior mechanical technician working off shore and we use various types of torqing devices on power generation and process equipment under strick guide lines ( not rough mining equipment owned by some one else )and the old flogging spanner when used correctly will cause no damage, some of out rad guns can generate 4000NM and this is not enough to undo some nuts, but a hit with the correct flogger and the initial resistance can be broken.

I used a floor jack under the breaker bar with the 36mm socket. Set the hand brake and use the car weight as resistance. The brakes had been replaced once in 37 yrs. so this was not the first time the axle nut was removed.
Bad back required me to use this technique with the floor jack.

Hi

I've never had one I couldn't get off with a 3/4 bar and socket and a big lump of pipe. I can't believe that people try and undo this sort of nut with car off the ground, that's just asking for the car to come of the stands..

If have you no luck you can give the nut a whack with a cold chisel in one of the castellated nuts spilt pin holes, drive it towards drum, not down towards the axle, you will need a new nut.

I have a 3/4 tension wrench, its not much longer than a 1/2 one, I can tension my axle nuts to the correct torque one handed.

Steve