No I wouldn't! What none of you have mentioned is that Ti is a heat resisting Alloy. Remember how hot those brakes get? Well that heat will conduct down through the whole stub axle and nut. Ti wheel nuts are all forged, heat treated and then machined. Screwing an F1 wheel nut onto the axel at room temperature is like putting the round block through the square hole! the threads are so loose you can almost throw it on from the other side of the room.xpensive wrote:I figure that any commercial workshop would very be happy to produce 200 nuts to your spec for 100 EUR a piece.
Simply machinig a nut from bar stock isn't the best way, possible yes, not really very good though. Ti is inherently awkward to machine, requiring more time and specific tooling. Machining of a solid wheel nut to anything like a current nut would be very expensive. (I talking about the pockets that the guns locate into, machining a simple Hex for a regular socket wouldn't be so bad) That is why forging is used, for strength and for less machining. I can see that £850 per nut is a valid price if you account for everything. Design, design of drop-forging tooling, heat treatment on tooling, material, drop-forging, clipping, heat treatment, machining, machine tooling/programming, protective (colour coding) treatment. And of course the major factor time.
Aluminium wheel nuts wouldn't be man-enough for the job. Wouldn't be able to tighten as much due to risk of threads stripping, damage could occur during a race from a prior pitstop that might cost vital seconds in removing the nut. Warm some Al up to about 200 degree C and try using it as a wheel nut!xpensive wrote:Unless you would be happy with 6000-series Aluminium, when cost should be a fraction. Probably lighter too.
Ti is the perfect material in everyway, light as Al, strong as Steel, but also resists deformation under load due to heat.
Steel would do the job, just it'll be heavy.
In this picture you can clearly see the pockets where the gun locates to. The surfaces of these pockets are rough and that is the original finish of the part after forging and before machining (It would have been shotblasted at some point also). And as you can remain the only areas of the forged nut that aren't machined.
That's your lot, 3 and a bit threads holds those wheels on. These are 2007/08 SAG wheel nuts.