Go and look in the boot now, while nothing is wrong. The key lives in the spare wheel well, the glovebox or a door pocket, and if it is in none of those then you have a problem that simply has not happened yet. Discovering it on a wet evening on Hall Lane, with a flat tyre and a spare you cannot fit, is the costly version of the same discovery.
When the key has gone, or the head is rounded, or corrosion has welded the nut to the stud, extraction tools come out to the car and the nut is drawn off without harming the wheel. A plain nut goes on in its place. Around E4 this is normally a diary job rather than a rescue: the test is next week, the tyres are due, or the wheels are booked to come off for refurbishment. Half an hour on a driveway at Friday Hill or Chingford Hatch beats the same problem surfacing in the middle of something that actually matters.
A lost locking wheel nut key is a small problem with a large consequence. The tyre may only need a repair, but if the wheel will not come off the car is going nowhere, and that is a genuinely bad position on the North Circular. Level in Highams Park, sloping in Friday Hill: we set the car straight first. Underground parking in Highams Park or Friday Hill is worth flagging. E4 takes in Friday Hill and Hatch Lane, and we work the lot.
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Cars in E4 tend to sit on the same set of wheels for years at a time, parked out in all weathers off Hatch Lane and around Chingford Green, and that is exactly the recipe for a nut that will not shift. We would rather deal with one on your own drive than on the roadside somewhere near the North Circular (A406).
All four wheels were due to come off and go away for a week, except one nut had other ideas. The refurbisher would not touch it and the collection was already arranged. We freed it the night before, left a matching plain nut behind, and the wheels went off on schedule.
A car that had not had a wheel off in six years, parked outside the house the whole time. Salt had done its work on the exposed thread. Heat, oil and slow steady turns brought it away without touching the stud, and the other three came off far more easily once they had the same treatment.
Two problems, one visit. A previous fitter had chewed the head, and now there was a puncture behind the very wheel nobody could remove. We extracted the ruined nut first, then took the tyre off and repaired the tread damage properly before it all went back together.
Bring it out anyway when we arrive. A key with worn splines sometimes still gives us useful information about the pattern, though the nut usually comes off by extraction regardless. Either way it ends with a nut you can undo yourself.
Yes. It is the sensible option if the car has been sitting on the same wheels for years, because the one that will not shift is rarely the one you expect. Doing the set at once means no repeat of this conversation next winter.
It should not. The tool grips the nut, not the alloy, and the face of the wheel is shielded. That is the whole difference between this and somebody attacking it with a chisel in a hurry.
Ideally, yes. The streets that run off Kings Head Hill are steep enough to matter when a car goes up on a jack, so we will pick the flattest ground within reach or ask you to roll it a few feet before we start.
You are not paying for a bay or losing the day, which is the bigger saving. The price is quoted before any tool touches the wheel, so there is nothing to discover at the end.
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