Quick-rusting lugs.
 

Hi everybody,

this is kind of a non-issue but I figured I'd post it up in case somebody else had a similar problem..

I bought some new Rotas recently and ordered the lugs the dealer recommended with them. The thing is that they started to rust about a week or so after I bought them. Now I know lugs eventually rust but I've never seen lugs rust that quick. I complained to the guy who replaced them for free but I'm pretty suspicious of the alternate set he sent me.

Anybody else have this kind of problem before?

what brand lugs?

You know what? That's an excellent question. I don't know! The guy just shipped them over boxless. I guess that should be my first clue how legit these lugs are..

Is there any way to tell just looking at the lugs? I can't see any brand written on them or anything.

not sure dude. lol. that may be your problem. they may be some cheap/janky lugs LOL. probably not structurally bad, but crappy fit/finish

At one of the shops I work at we had this happen. Got good pricing on 2000 lugs so we ordered them from our wheel supplier and the chrome chiped off them way way too easily and they rusted within a few weeks. since then we only buy reputable brand lugs at 5X the cost of the cheapos.

yeah. you get what you pay for.

i have gorilla lugs. inexpensive and yet, good quality

I have Muteki lugs and they aren't too bad. I would love to get Kics Neos but...that's way out of my budget range lol...

But ya most likely the lugs you got may have no protective coating on it and rust will show right away. I work in a machine show and I was surface grinding some steel. I turned the machine off and went to lunch. I came back a few hours later to start the parts again and I already had white spots on the parts. There were some small specks but there was a few that were large. I was amazed at how fast rust was showing on the parts. I didn't put enough coolant in my water to prevent the rust from forming.

If the lugs you got aren't shiny then they have no form of protection. Here in the shop we send out our steel material to get zinc or nickle plated to prevent rust.

I hope you didnt get some second hand take off lugs....they were probably over torqued and they may have stress cracks in them....I would be really scared to run them on the car. that may be why they are rusting, from the stress cracks.

yeh, ive had that problem too. when i bought my DR21's my buddy's
shop gave me some cheezo lugs for free (included in price). they
were nice and chrome, pretty and all for one week.

i ended up getting some black painted ones for like $25 at the same
shop. those have been very good through the last 3 months of
salt

Interesting! I was beginning to think I was the only person to make a mistake like this. Structurally, the lugs were alright. That's not to say what might happen in another week, month or year.

Here's some shots of the worst of the lugs in question:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...it/003crop.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...it/002crop.jpg

Notice the 2nd single wheel lock that isn't rusting. At all. This is in about a several month timeframe. I don't think it was longer than maybe 2 months or less. Again, structurally the lugs seemed stable but they rusted TO my wheels. I sprained my back trying to get these bastards off.

I wonder if this jerk made these himself or something, I asked if he wanted the old ones back but he didn't care. The replacement lugs are not open-holed ones like in the picture - they're covered. Hopefully they'll last a little longer, the originals lasted about 1-2 weeks before they started to rust noticeably.

One last thing: any suggestions on how long I should watch these new lugs for? 3 mo.'s sounds about right...