ive seen issues twice out on the trails in the past six months. one was a land cruiser that rolled. the tire came off the wheel. guy needed to swap out to the spare. he had all six as spline drive lug nuts. well, on the first one, he broke the key (too tight i guess). some strangers helped him with their socket set. they had to manually remove SIX spline drive lug nuts. this is usually done by hammering a socket on. who knows how many got ruined doing that. the 2nd time someone had a brand new wrangler jl and punctured the tire. after digging all over the jeep for 30 minutes, the locking lug key (stocker) was no where to be found. help up the entire group (17 rigs) for about an hour while they got the spare swapped out.If you go offroad those wheel locks are actually creating risk. I don't have a problem with them on the spare, and I keep a wheel lock on my spare tire. The ones on the ground run a risk of being damaged by a rock or getting clogged up with mud. If you go offroad, the safe play is to replace your locking lugs with the standard ones. When you're back off the trail you can quickly put the locks back on with an electric impact if you feel the need to have them regularly.
Well said sir!Seems like the better deterrence to tire thieves is to be sure your jeep is so tall that the cheap $30 jack they're using can't reach anything to lift it.
if you have $2k in MTs on your vehicle and everything else on the street is a camry, im putting in the effort to get those MTs!Often the difference in theft deterrent is making it harder/inconvenient for theft to occur. As many have said, wheel locks can be defeated, however they will just as likely move on to an easier target. Like @Headbarcode mentioned I too got the Gorilla splined lug nuts. Every nut is a "lock"... including the 3 on the spare. They also come in black if that's your druthers.