Wheel warning for Commodore

[Jamie]

The Drive Team, The Sydney Morning Herald, 15/12/06

Holden has told its dealers that the new VE model's wheels won't fit old Commodores.

Holden VE Commodore: production line at the Elizabeth factory in Adelaide.

When Holden introduced the all-new VE Commodore in August it changed some crucial dimensions of the wheel-locating system. This was done to avoid confusion on the production line (as the Holden factory will be building both new and old models for some time yet) and to cope with the new Commodore's extra weight, width and grip levels.

Holden sent the following statement to Drive on Wednesday: "Fitting VE wheels onto a VZ [or earlier model Commodore] is not recommended or condoned by GM Holden as it raises some safety concerns as there are two major differences in the wheels."

Holden said the VE Commodore has 14mm wheel studs and earlier Commodores have 12mm wheel studs.

"If a VE wheel were fitted onto a VZ [or earlier model Commodore] there is a concern that there would not be enough bearing area under the retention nut on the aluminium wheel, which, worse case scenario, means the wheel could potentially fall off."

[Camino LS6]

Good to know, but easily remedied by replacing the studs with longer ones.

[Sixty8panther]

Exactly. This is the car guys equivelat of the yellow sticker on the

microwave that says "do not dry off your pets inside this device."

[Oracle of Delphi]

Old news!

[Jamie]

Fittitng 14 mm diameter studs to a VB - VZ Commodore should be a straight forward job. A bit of drilling so the larger diameter stud would fit the early model hubs would be required. The only other issue would be the PCD (Pitch Circle Diameter).

Using a 12x1.5 nut with a larger taper for the purposes of using a VE wheel on an earlier model Commodore is not advised, as there would be too much clearance between the wheel stud and the drilling in the rim. You would wind up with an extra millimetre clearance all around the stud. In theory it should work, provided the rim is correctly centre bore located on the hub. The problem would be to find a nut maker who would put his company on the line to cater for the (possibly) few who would need such a nut.

The VZ and earlier commodores have a 5 x 120mm PCD stud layout, but I don't know if the VE uses the same PCD. Some people I know that have looked at the VE stud pattern say that it appears to be a smaller PCD, but as they haven't actually made any measurements, it may just be an optical illusion created by the bigger diameter studs on the VE.