1954 Chevy Pickup | Cragar Lug Nut Washers

February 12th, 2004 : Cragar Lug Nut Washers

This may seem like quite a trivial issue, but if you sport a uni-lug design on your wheels like I do with my Cragar SS rims, this post contains some very important information!

I was having a problem, from day one, with my truck shimmying at 50 m.p.h. or more, and the solution has taken a year of trials and efforts that finally pointed to these little washers as being the primary cause! As it turns out, there's quite a bit more to these li'l guys than first meets the eye. Long story, short -- I had off-center washers on my rear wheels and center washers on my front wheels, and all of the washers were bent ... concave ... from improper installation, among other things.

Cragar Washers

Cragar makes two types of washers for my Cragar SS wheels, as noted above, and which ones you need to use depends on your bolt pattern. My bolt pattern, front and rear, is 5 by 4 3/4 ... and that means I need to use the "center" washer -- so my rear wheels had the wrong washers on them. And that's just what led to my final victory in this ongoing shimmy problem of mine, because lately, I was noticing a slight up-and-down bobbing in my rear end ... mostly noticable at slow speeds, like 25 m.p.h. ... which caused me to start investigating. Next I found out that those wheels weren't centered.

Most mechanics don't know everything and rather than admit it to anyone (including themselves) they put out bad advice. I was told I needed to get different wheels; wheels that weren't of a uni-lug design, because these were impossible to center. Thanks to all the great motor heads at HotRodders.com I learned otherwise.

Today I purchased twenty brand new Cragar Washers, installed them, had my tires re-balanced and took the truck out for a test drive. I felt a big difference immediately! But the real treat was when I got her on the highway and took it up to 75 m.p.h. -- she was as steady as could be! Not a trace of a shimmy at any speed!

I was about to spend $1,500.00 on new wheels and tires, but achieved the same results with $30.00 instead, by taking the time to research all the possibilities first.

Click Here to check out all the possibilities for your ride's lugs.

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