Discovery 1 Locking wheel nuts on spare wheel

Hi all,

I have just bought a Discovery XS, not bad nick, but no locking wheel nuts. As the wheels are the originals and quite nice, I thought I ought to secure them, particularly the spare.

Bought the pattern part from Rimmers. Got confused by some loose nut covers on the original non-locking nuts (who designed those then...?), but got them on, all fine except the spare.

The locking nut is not threaded all the way through, and therefore does not let the nut tighten up to the wheel - about a 2/3mm gap before the force required is excessive. Spoke to Rimmers, who checked the original part, and the locking nut for the spare on that is half thickness - which gets round the problem. However, they also spoke to the manufacturers (there are 2 for the pattern items) who both stop the threads "early", and claim that there is no problem.

I can obviously get round this, and I am not too ticked off with Rimmers, who have made an effort to sort it out, and offered refunds etc, but I don't think I have missed anything here, and I was wondering if anyone else had had the same problem.

Tbh I wouldn't worry about the spare being locked too much.. mine's steel anyway so isn't a priority.

But no knowledge of that myself..

I had a similar problem after my wheel fell off at 50mph...don't ask
anyway I couldn't find the wheel after it parted company with the Disco, pitch black and it was somewhere in a field...so I put the spare on with the 3 wheel nuts that held the spare on the back...I went back in the daylight found my wheel and decided to use that as a spare...I got 5 new wheel nuts from a local Landy parts dealer ..cost me £30 but they wouldn't hold the spare on... the ones that held the spare on where threaded all the way through on mine so it was swap time...I have locking nuts on the spare as that is easier to nick as you don't have to jack it up....

With alloy wheels, you need spare wheel nuts as they have the deeper thread than the road ones but they still look identical outside with the fitted stainless caps.

For the locking spare wheel nut which uses a Yale style key you require NTC 8278.
I don't know if that part number is still good now as I got my locking nut back in 1999 at £18.75 + vat.