Just purchased my first Ford of this era. 1989 F250 4WD HD. I attempted to pull the wheels this morning to look at the front brakes, and it took forever to get the wheels off. I ended up beating the inside of the wheel with a rubber mallet to get the wheel off.

The wheel fit on the hubs is VERY tight. The wheels are stock argent 16". I thought they might just be rusted in place, but after getting the wheels off and replacing them, I had to beat the inside of the tire again to get the wheel off.

Is this common, or are there any tricks to solving this problem? It appears that there have no modifications to the front end as far as wheels, hubs, etc.

They are stock, or aftermarket wheels? If aftermarket the hub hole might not be big enough. Id take a wire brush and clean the hub area off on the truck, and put some grease on it, and then with a steel wool or something like that, clean the hub center on the wheel.

Everything is stock. Thank You. I will try the wire brush, grease, etc, to see if it makes a difference.

After cleaning, I use anti seize compound. It helps with the way steel interacts with aluminum as well.

Do you use the nickel anti-seize compund, or something else? These are stock steel wheels.

fatherdoug said:

Do you use the nickel anti-seize compund, or something else? These are stock steel wheels.

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Nickel works well for me!

My steel ones go on and off easy(when I had them). Let us know how it goes.

Update. I had to break out the dremel tool with a fine barrel sander and sand down the ridges on the wheels. They now fit close but not god-awful tight. Both front wheels were like this, but the back wheels came right off. Somebody had already applied copper-based anti-seize to the lugs on the rear wheels. SWEET!

Thanks everybody for your help.