WARNING Wheel Beauty Ring Removal - Bronco

[Dom]

Found i had a die.

Excavating the hole with bad bolt. I think the bad bolt chewed the female threads

I'm my opinion, so far, it's the bolts. They really needed a lot of cleaning up to screw in smoothly. I cleaned up a good bolt and reinserted in a hole i didn't tap, it fit fine. So the wheel hole was good, but the bolts are sloppy.

I definitely wouldn't do this again without a tap and die handy

I wonder if it's the bolt threads, measuring them they are not consistently 1.5, not perfectly anyway

Good work here! Good info!

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[Newbrunny]

Sorry for reviving this thread. Took rings off to paint. Came off fine. 59/60 went back on relatively ok. #60 is stuck about 1/4” out. And of course I have stripped the head. Tried everything to get it out. Going to try and get a bolt welded on so there is something to grab onto and then extract.

Wish I would have read this thread beforehand. Especially cleaning off the threads before reinstalling. Makes sense now but did not think of it at the time. Have done similar before on Toyos with no problem.

Thankfully the bolt sticking out is on the passenger side so I don’t see it. Lol

 

[flip]

Sorry for reviving this thread. Took rings off to paint. Came off fine. 59/60 went back on relatively ok. #60 is stuck about 1/4” out. And of course I have stripped the head. Tried everything to get it out. Going to try and get a bolt welded on so there is something to grab onto and then extract.

Wish I would have read this thread beforehand. Especially cleaning off the threads before reinstalling. Makes sense now but did not think of it at the time. Have done similar before on Toyos with no problem.

Thankfully the bolt sticking out is on the passenger side so I don’t see it. Lol

You can also drill out the center of the bolt which we've found generates enough heat to overcome the loc-tite friction. Don't drill the whole thing, just use a bit a couple sizes smaller than the bolt diameter. Bolt is soft and can be drilled fairly easy.

 

[DD214]

I too changed my beauty rings and I did take a wire brush to the threads and put anti sieze on the thread bored I put them back on.

 

[B Miller]

The Bronco goes in this month for the final fix or possible replacement. I'll update here with the results.

It sucks driving around with four bolts sticking out of the wheel. Everywhere I go people are like "dude your bolts are coming out." I know.

 

[Rkgzx9leftcoast]

Sucks you went through all of this. I lucked out, changed my tires last weekend and the shop took off rings to change out. I was like watch out for thread lock, but luckily they went on and off without any crazy hangup.

I did my spare ring myself and noticed mine did not have a huge amount of thread lock on bolts. May have varied by build weeks?

 

[Felix808]

You can also drill out the center of the bolt which we've found generates enough heat to overcome the loc-tite friction. Don't drill the whole thing, just use a bit a couple sizes smaller than the bolt diameter. Bolt is soft and can be drilled fairly easy.

Sounds like a heat gun may be of help in removal.

 

[flip]

Sounds like a heat gun may be of help in removal.

That would be the safest route to go but the concern there is damaging the finish on the ring or wheel. The "patch" of loc-tite on the bolt is yellow but am unsure what strength or temp is needed to liquify it. Obviously, if a heat gun get's hot enough to screw the finish up, a pencil torch is going to only be worse. We chose to drill because of the possibility of finish damage from external heat. Drilling does impart enough heat into the bolt to loosen the thread locker and aids extraction as does the metal removal from the center of the bolt. The downside for drilling is using a bit is the possibility of going off center and screwing the wheel up or slipping off and scratching the finish.

 

[Felix808]

That would be the safest route to go but the concern there is damaging the finish on the ring or wheel. The "patch" of loc-tite on the bolt is yellow but am unsure what strength or temp is needed to liquify it. Obviously, if a heat gun get's hot enough to screw the finish up, a pencil torch is going to only be worse. We chose to drill because of the possibility of finish damage from external heat. Drilling does impart enough heat into the bolt to loosen the thread locker and aids extraction as does the metal removal from the center of the bolt. The downside for drilling is using a bit is the possibility of going off center and screwing the wheel up or slipping off and scratching the finish.

Pointed solder iron sounds like then. Pin pointed direct heat

 

[Pseudoko]

heh... definitely leaning towards going after market wheels after seeing people having this problem. Those bolts are not cheap either!

 

[Lifeliberty]

heh... definitely leaning towards going after market wheels after seeing people having this problem. Those bolts are not cheap either!

Neither are aftermarket wheels. Sasquatch wheels are fine, you can even run them without the beauty ring.

This is something I recommend you be aware of and prepare for if you ever should remove the bolts, which you never really NEED to. Worse case scenario, you majorly mess up the wheel and then have to buy new ones, then you can buy whatever.

 

[Pseudoko]

Neither are aftermarket wheels. Sasquatch wheels are fine, you can even run them without the beauty ring.

This is something I recommend you be aware of and prepare for if you ever should remove the bolts, which you never really NEED to. Worse case scenario, you majorly mess up the wheel and then have to buy new ones, then you can buy whatever.

I was already leaning towards getting aftermarket wheels when the time comes to replace the tires. originally i was planning to repair the beauty rings (have a couple of battle scars) prior to selling them later but probably will just sell it as is. Still going to be some time before I will need to replace the tires.

 

[BroncoDymond88]

I removed my rings to have them painted. I used an impact drill and everything went beautifully. I was surprised at how much loktite had been put on these but the impact drill ate it up. They all came out straight.

 

[mtheawesomeone]

I had to remove the beauty ring last night on one of my Badlands wheels so the black inner wheel could be re-powder coated by my dealer. It appeared to be hit pretty good with an errant impact socket at the factory and had a big half moon scratch all the way to bare metal. I didn't want to chance a tech removing it so I carefully removed all the bolts with the proper Torx socket. I did have to use a breaker bar to initially get them to break then a ratchet to carefully walk them out. Tons of yellow locktite which made them impossible to hand loosen until they were almost completely backed out. Happy to report all appeared to be threaded properly and were not damaged. Now after reading this post I am not looking forward to the re-install.

 

[TyGuy40]

The Bronco goes in this month for the final fix or possible replacement. I'll update here with the results.

It sucks driving around with four bolts sticking out of the wheel. Everywhere I go people are like "dude your bolts are coming out." I know.

Curious how things turned out. I had the exact same thing happen to me.

Removed the rings, plasti-dipped them to see the aesthetic, and now several of them won't screw back in, and one of them is completely stripped. So you are recommending I just take it back to the dealer to see what they can do?

Very frustrating.

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