What are Fuchs lug nuts made of?
 

Does anyone have any metallurgical and dimensional specs on the aluminum lug nuts for Fuchs wheels?

Thanks in advance.
Sherwood

Pretty sure they're aluminum. What grade and/or alloy composition is used I don't know.

More than likely, those lug nuts are 6061-T6 aluminum. This is a very commonly used alloy...very strong and easy to machine.

not sure either but I don't use them any more... bought and installed steel ones... some suggest not a good idea to use on a car that is tracked... I noticed all the on and off I was doing was wearing the AL nuts... I guess when I sell the car, I'll put them back on. also not sure how much the nuts are stressed but 6061 is not considered strong AL right?

Right. 6061 is usually touted as being "high strength aircraft aluminum" in ads, but in reality it's not that great. 42ksi ultimate and 35 ksi yield, IIRC. 7075 or even some of the 2XXX series is a lot stronger.

after stripping two aluminium lug nuts I went completely to steel and sleep much better these days.

fwiw, aftermarket Alum. lugs seem to vary quite a bit from OE .

bump

Sherwood, what are you wanting to do with the material spec. and dimensions?

do you have any friends with a mass spec.?

I may want to fabricate my own version. It would involve less research if someone already had this information.

Sherwood

If you're making your own and you want to use aluminum, I recommend 2024. Be aware it's not weldable.

why screw around with Al when you can make it out of Ti...

I think RWebb has a good question...
also I just thought of an interesting dimension... what is the shape of the curved surface the that sits in the cup of the wheel?

That's the spirit!

David, how much stronger is the 2024 than 6061? Twice?

I would make them out of Ti too! These would be easy to make and one could also make open ended nuts at a reasonable price...


Cheers

Titanium galls when used against steel, is notch sensitive and is not particularly easy to machine.

I find it hard to believe one could machine and anodize a small lot of aluminum lug nuts cheaper than buying OEM (even Porsche OEM). 2024-T4 is a common aluminum fastener alloy/condition but I would use forged 7075-T6 for lug nuts.

It is pretty easy to believe it can be done cheap. One needs to make a single solid model and draw tool paths off of it. Then, nest that model into the piece of material one has purchased for machining. You could easily make 150 or so from a single piece that would fit on a tombstone in your horizonatal mill. Probably be two sided operation, so at some point labour would be needed to flip the material 180 degrees, then machine the other side. A tombstone like this could take 4 pieces of material, say 6 or 8 tombstones in the pallet pool, and over two nights you make 3600 lug nuts..........

So you need to pay off your tooling costs and programming time, but lets say you do this once a week (in the overnight hours) and make 14000+ nuts in a month. How much R&D costs goes on each nut? This assumes you have machinery at your disposal capable of running "lights out" and you have down time. I doubt there is 8 hours in creating the solid model (Island would know better than I) and I know I have the tooling already to fit precut material into the tombstones....

Then, you could leave them raw, or for a minimal charge per part, have the anodized or plated any way you like.

But, you would need to make a large run of them to make it worth while for sure. If one was making a standard tapered seat, the run time on the machine could be reduced over doing the ball seat. But one could also have a special cutter made to make the ball seat and reduce run time.

Yes, I have been thinking about doing this out of 2024......

Cheers

About 25 to 50% depending on the heat treat.

It's also at least twice as expensive.

"Titanium galls when used against steel, ..."
- I assume they would be used against the Al Fuchs wheels, but maybe there would still be galling.

"I find it hard to believe one could machine and anodize a small lot of aluminum lug nuts cheaper than buying OEM"
- That's what I don't understand. My Ti comment was meant as a joke as there is not much in the way of wt. savings here. But Sherwood has a track record of clever, reasonably priced items for our cars, so he may have a secret up his sleeve...