Why do the German's use Lug Bolts instead of Lug Nuts?




Have you seen the two-part Porsche bolts where the seating surface does not turn against the wheel?




The cone of the lug bolt turns freely on the shaft.
The head face and outer face of the "cone" are flat and fairly polished, so they minimize drag during tightening so the majority of the applied torque is goes directly to bolt tension.
I took off my Datsun 510 a slew of these bolts with a washer permanently on them. They are called "washer bolts" (creative name, right?). How they are made, I do not know. Maybe the threads are forged, with the forging causing the outside of the threads to stick up from the shaft.
Last edited by eric_in_sd; Apr 8, 2023 at 04:46 PM.




I took off my Datsun 510 a slew of these bolts with a washer permanently o usen them. They are called "washer bolts" (creative name, right?). How they are made, I do not know. Maybe the threads are forged, with the forging causing the outside of the threads to stick up from the shaft.
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Apparently they are known as "Floating Collar Lug nuts".
Porsche seems to be the only one using a "bolt" style.




I am sure some engineer at Porsche had some very good reason to use a spherical seat instead of a cone.
Maybe has to do with early alloy wheels and alloy lug nuts?
But for a lug bolt, I don't get why they'd be different. When I bought my Benz wheels for my Audi A6, I had to purchase different bolts, as the seats were different than the Audi ones.
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Last edited by tbirdvet; Apr 10, 2023 at 02:37 PM.




Fastener/tool retention, drive torque without deformation, etc.
Security screws are typically used for that exact reason.
I'll say it again; I bet they were implemented to prevent galling of the aluminum wheel, because that's a better solution than putting in some sort of a seat in the hole in the wheel, which I bet they started doing when they realized they were going overboard on the engineering for something the vast majority of users would never even notice, let alone think about, unless they had to buy a replacement, at which point they would wonder why a lug bolt costs them twenty bucks.
I wish they were made from steel, though. Speaking of galling, the aluminum has high friction on the bolt holes, making them annoying to insert, even after greasing the threads.











