Your Questions Answered: Do I need a key for aftermarket wheels nuts? 

Just wondering if you have heard of rear brakes wearing out relatively quickly on the Nissan X-TRAIL ePOWER? My wife has just had hers serviced at 40,000kms and been told rear brakes will need replacing next service. She uses e-brake all the time and there is very little sign of brake dust when washing the car. I thought if any pads needed to be replaced it would be fronts first.?I have read online that if using e-brake, the pads may seize and wear as they are not used often, but again I don’t see much brake dust on her wheels. Any thoughts or have you heard of this before? - Gordin

Answer: Hi Gordin, yes, rear brake pads wearing faster is becoming more common on modern cars. It started with the introduction of an electronic safety alphabet soup of brake-related electronic traction features (ABS, TCS, ESC etc), with the net result being the rear brakes doing more work than before.

Also, hill-hold assist or even electronic park brakes can increase wear to the rear brake pads. Rear braking surface areas (the amount of brake pad and disc surface) are not getting bigger; generally they’re smaller than the fronts, and this doesn’t help extend service life.

So basically, they’re small brakes with a bigger job than before. Way back before all the brake and traction assist features became a thing, rear brakes were the casual on-call workers of the brake world.

The front brakes did most of the work. A proportioning valve ensured that only about 30 per cent of braking effort was done by the rear, so that the rear brakes were less likely to lock up under heavy braking (when weight is transferred to the front).

I recently read your review of the Subaru Trailseeker with interest and have noticed the increasing number of electric SUVs on the market, so my question is around accessories (think ARB, TJM, etc) for these types of vehicles. Are you able to fit a bull bar, or similar protection, to these types of vehicles?I haven’t seen any electric SUVs with one fitted, and haven’t seen any mention of them in any road tests or articles. I don’t do serious off-roading, but I do drive on sealed and unsealed roads on the Mid North Coast of NSW and its hinterland, where dodging roos, wallabies and worse can be a regular occurrence. - Alex

Answer: Alex, that’s a great question. While EVs have specific cooling and electronic sensor and radar function requirements that can be affected by fitting an accessory bull bar or nudge bar, so do most modern ICE (internal combustion) vehicles.

The main issue is not an EV one, but that the testing and validation requirements for a bull bar or nudge bar are such that it has to be worth the manufacturer’s while to engineer and test.

In other words, if there is enough sales volume for a vehicle likely to be used in wildlife collision risk areas, a manufacturer will find a way to develop one for the market.

It would be hard to justify a niche of a niche – those buyers who have bought one of many different EVs that still represent a relatively small portion of the market, and who live or drive rurally, and so would consider the need for a bull bar.

Hopefully this will change as EVs gain popularity. Aside from fiddly stuff like engineering a bull bar to work with airbag sensors, front parking sensors and radar cruise control (if fitted) to work properly, it can also add a lot of weight and reduce aerodynamic efficiency – very much the enemy of EV range.

Hi there, I have a Subaru BRZ that has a set of aftermarket Niche alloy wheels. I got a puncture yesterday and thought I could change the wheel with the spare and sort out the puncture after work. I got the jack and wheel wrench out, all good to go, but the wheel wrench was too big for the wheel nuts on the BRZ. My Dad has a bunch of tools in his shed, but none of his different socket sets would fit. Then I noticed that the wheel nuts had weird shape – they all were smooth, round and had grooves cut out of the outer edges. I have heard of wheels having one locking nut per wheel so people don’t steal the wheels so easily, but do you know what these wheel nuts are? I looked though the car thinking the previous owner might have left a socket that might work but nothing – Ben

Answer: Hey Ben, I think what you probably have on your wheels are splined ‘tuner’ wheel nuts. These are fitted to some aftermarket wheels that have limited space around the lug holes.

As you have discovered, you cannot use a hex or star socket or even regular wheel wrench to remove them – it’s likely you won’t even get these types of sockets to even fit over the tuner wheel nuts.

You need to buy what’s called a tuner key socket to remove the wheel nuts. These keys have a very thin wall so they can fit in the limited space.

Make sure you get the right tuner key for your car. There are six- or seven-spline types, in various diameters. You might need to measure the wheel nut diameter (tricky to do, unless you Dad happens to have measuring calipers in his shed) to make sure you get the right tuning key size (for example, 17mm).

Make sure to keep the tuner key in the car, and if your spare wheel is the stock OEM wheel, that the tuner nuts have the correct taper for those wheels (in case it’s a different taper and you have to use the OEM wheel on the car if you get a flat).

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