Here's my situation - Like VectorWolf, I bought some wicked looking Kazera KZ-V 17" rims for my winter tires. They look sharp, good price and served me well all winter. These come with fancy lug nuts which are round with 6 slight grooves in them - not nearly hex at all so you *must* use the provided "installation kit" (which just looks like a strange spark plug socket).

Thursday I had an appointment with the dealer to look at a few items (brake squeal, tail-light water, etc), the dealership is 2 hours away and forecast is 70F. Time to swap to summer tires. So after work I pick up daughter #2 and #3, put daughter #3 to bed and take daughter #2 outside to swap the tires using the jack and lug-wrench in the trunk. My wheel lock and "installation kit" were in the trunk too.

We swapped both wheels on the drivers side - all is well. Then, after getting 4 lugs loose on the front pass wheel the 5th lug is really tight - the lug wrench twisted, then the socket wrenched off at a funny angle. I couldn't believe it - the stupid little socket had peeled open like the foil on a fine wine.

Fortunately, I was able to use it to tighten the 4 loose lugs enough. Then I considered my situation:

17" wheels on the passenger side - no way to get them off.
18" wheels on drivers side - I could take them off, but I couldn't put the 17" wheels on. Regular lugs don't fit in those rims.
Time is 10:00pm - no place to buy these things in Corning, NY.
I gotta be up at 4:00am to drive to Rochester to drop off my car at 7:30am so I can attend a training class at 8:30am.

I tried the 24-hr Wal-Mart anyway - they had plenty of hex lug nuts, lug wrenches and a wonderful selection of jacks, but no custom keys.

Next day - I drive 130 miles to the dealership. The car pulls significantly left under acceleration and significantly right under breaking, but I can control it. No vibration - the lugs on the front tire were tight enough for the trip.

Next problem - Mazda dealership doesn't have any sort of assorted kit of common lug sockets or keys or anything. I trust them to look into it and attend a training class. Class finishes early at 1:30pm so I call the dealer. They say, "hey, we found your lug key in your trunk - it's broken, we can't get the wheels off so we can't do anything." I slowly count to 10 remembering how clearly I explained that problem to them at 7:30am.

Not a lot to go on here - the stupid little socket had no part number, no brand name, no markings of any kind and I'm in a strange city with no NAV in the rental car. I try an Advance Auto Parts I happened to find - they recommend I go to Pep Boys. Folks at Pep Boys are really nice and polite, but explain to me how completely I am screwed. If someone shows up there having lost their "installation kit" or bought used and didn't get one they're SOL. They would tell such a person to drive it home or tow it home, but get it out and come back when they do have a key. However, they also recommended me to nearby customization shop. Custom Shop #1 cheers me up because there is a rice buffet outside and in. They sell me a key which looks right, but proved to be too big (my bad for not carrying one of the 10 lugs I removed with me - they refunded me the $15 later).

I arrive at the dealership to test the too-big key and the dealership thinks they've done something nice - "One of the guys looked up your rims online. You have to call this toll-free number and have them ship you a new installation kit. It'll take a week or two," and they give me the number. Clearly not a solution, but they think they're done.

After I *explain* my point of view the service manager recommends Custom Shop #2 - 15 minutes away (~11 miles) somewhere in the middle of Rochester. The SM knows where it is - "you get back on the 490, take it to the 590, get off on 104, left, right, left, left......" Yeah, in a pigs eye I'll find that - be good service if they set one of their guys, but clearly they're not about to do this, they consider it *my* problem - then it hits me: my car has NAV and wonder-of-wonders, the dealership hasn't managed to disable my car (wise of them to leave it alone all day). So I use my NAV to find Customer Shop #2 and they have perfect key - I bought 2 for $10 each.

Now I get to the dealer, it's 4:30pm, "oh, the techs are all going home now," they tell me. Keep the rental and come back tomorrow. 260 miles round-trip. Nice.

So, my advice to everyone - get a 2nd wheel lock key (there was a thread by another member about 6 months ago along the lines of 'aaaauugh! I broke my wheel lock) and get a 2nd installation kit or lug key for your custom rims (if applicable). Kazara rim owners take special note - your little thin walled socket is just as flimsy as it looks.

 

Nah, true blue - maybe it was originally silver. I hope the silver owners appreciate how far I've gone to discredit the curse of the silver.

Can't say quality of the lug tool ever occurred to me. The Kazera rims were $129 each on sale. I know some folks spend far more for rims, but these aren't $20 steel Discount Tire specials either.

No one had any problem getting the wheels off....... once they had the tool. No tool means no luck. Almost as good as a wheel lock. No issue if you stay with OEM wheels or regular hex lugs, but for those of you with or considering rims with non-hex lugs - one lug tool in the trunk isn't enough.

 

Anyone ever see the wheel lock key get rusty? My wheel locks came in a plastic zip-lock bag so I always stored the 4 spare lug nugs and the wheel lock key in that bag in the trunk. The bag must have gotten damp at some point because the inside of the bag felt wet and the key looked a bit corroded. Not a good sign.

 

Sounds like a compelling reason to get one of those kits which has all locks. However, in that case you'd better have more than 1 key - you'll have 5 times as many chances to break the wheel lock key.

 

True - you can't stop the pros - so why would I bother?

Wheel locks keep the low-end punks away. In my experience the low end punks are more common. Plus wheel locks on the OEM rims (vs. someone's $3k rims) is probably (hopefully) a sufficient deterrent that the pros or punks will not take the trouble for your OEM rims and will take the wheels off the car parked next to you.

Where I live there is absolutely no risk of the wheels being stolen. However, I do take the car into Rochester and other metro areas and the worst place to get your wheels stolen is >100 miles from home.

Now, for this thread the original point was the custom wheel lugs that came with the custom rims. They were not wheel locks, but they required a custom adapter which broke and left me in the same position as someone with a broken wheel lock. Wouldn't have been a problem if I'd originally had two of the 'installation kits'.

 

Yeah, wheel locks are one thing, but don't forget the actual lugnut adapter if you have aftermarket rims with a non-standard shape. In this case I wasn't burned by the key, I was burned by the "installation kit" from Kazera - cheap aluminum or some other highly polished crap. I managed to find a replacement for it in that custom shop in Rochester which was high grade steel. The thing feels five times as heavy as the original.

 

A bit of follow-up - (lol - funny this is over a year later)

Sometime after I posted this another forum member PM'd me to ask the name of the shop. I had forgotten, but I think I pointed him to the right place.

I ran across the receipt this week while cleaning out the truck. It's partially ruined from a little leaked 'tire shine', but the name of the shop is clear:

Auto Finishers Supply Co of Rochester, Inc.
Custom Accessories
http://www.autofinishers.com

1711 North Clinton Ave
Rochester, NY 14621-1598
(585) 544-1480

*EDIT NOTE - for you NAV users - the original NAV disk doesn't get the location of the street number correct - the directions will throw you way north, plus this shop is on the border of Rochester and North Rochester. Just zero in on North Clinton Ave near the freeway and watch the street numbers yourself and you should find it easy enough.

The parts were "gorilla (blurred)d-key" Just $10 each. I swear I would have paid $100 for one anywhere in Corning that night when my original key broke.

So, thought that might be helpful to other Rochester-area folks.

(and LionZoo, I wasn't talking about the locking keys, I was talking about the adapter for my aftermarket rims - if you do get some aftermarket rims that have lugs which are not standard hex then you might find yourself with exactly this problem - buy spares early).