Locking Wheel nuts

The wheels fitted to my Excel are clearly from the Toyota parts bin. They are the same as those fitted to the Celica Supra and probably others. They were however offered as genuine Lotus originals and to prove this they have a nice (flimsy plastic) Lotus centre cap. I quite like them although I'm not sure if they were optional or standard on the Excel. The sales leaflet I have from 1984 shows them fitted and doesn't mention that they were any "option" as such.

Lotus publicity flier 1984

Anyway my problem wasn't the wheels; it was the fact that someone had thoughtfully fitted locking wheel nuts and then (not so thoughtfully) disposed of the socket key/adaptor. Unfortunately only one tyre holds air; I have slow punctures on 2 wheels and a not so slow puncture on one other. The tyres will need fixing. I'd rather fix the punctures as this size is now unobtainable so changing just one or two isn't an option- I will eventually need a full set of substitutes before I can drive with safety- (but that's another story). For the time being-just pushing the thing around the garage holding air will be good enough!  Anyway in order to sort this the wheel shave to come off.

 I've been here before- it once took me three days of hammering to tap a set off my Escort. In the process both wheels and my hands accrued a considerable amount of collateral damage and I didn't want to do that again! Of course, I do have a set of "locking wheel nut removers". I put these in inverted commas because they seem to be of ornamental value only. They failed with the Escort and they failed again here. I reckoned I needed another approach.

Firstly, I took some Blu-tack and warmed it before pushing it firmly into the socket head of one of the nuts. When pulled out this gave a template for the size and position of the indentations into when the teeth on the missing key should fit. I then found a socket that fitted over the nut centre but whose rim overlapped the position of the key holes, and then I transferred the tooth pattern to the outside of the socket using a felt tipped pen. Finally I used a grinder to remove material between the "tooth" positions and hey presto! A rough and ready key.
Anyway, I fitted that to my impact gun and away we went.- Well I say away we went but it turned out these nuts were tighter than buggery, and took a hell of a long time to loosen- but eventually they did and I was rewarded with that lovely soft "Whirring" sound an air wrench makes when it wins and the nut finally loosens! Well the makeshift key was pretty much destroyed in this process (pic) which was sad as it was a fairly new socket. However,  it was cheaper than getting one of the mobile wheel-nut removers out -they had quoted me £25 per wheel (plus VAT)!

One final note- These hub nuts turned out to be of the flat-washer variety. Bit of a shame as I have a whole set of taper seat nuts taken from my Elite and I had intended to replace the lock nuts with these. Sadly therefore a new set of 4 flat washer types- £9.99 off eBay!

Locking nuts off, note key holes to which blu-tack was moulded (upper right) and flat washer seats to base. Remnants of my makeshift key bottom left- Gone but not forgotten!