The key should be in the back with the stuff for the spare tire. Mine was in a bag with the jack, tire iron, etc in the foam holder thing.

Have you ever had the tires rotated? The tech might have thrown it in the glove box or forgot to put it back.

 

Same for me. Trunk near the spare with the extra 4 bolts/nuts


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I would look very hard to find that key........I'm betting it is somewhere in your vehicle! (at least fingers crossed for you)

 

If it came from the factory like that, the key should be in the foam thing in the spare tire.

 

My 2020 came with wheel locks. As soon as I realized this I took them off and threw them away.

Taking them off was tough. I got three off by myself, but kept slipping on the fourth. The problem is, it takes a tremendous amount of torque to loosen the bolts (110 ft-lb is the spec as I recall, Volvo WTF are you thinking anyway??) and it is hard to keep a breaker bar centered while applying sufficient torque because the socket rocks on the lug. Finally, on the last one, I went to Discount Tire and asked them to try an impact wrench. Reluctantly and with great care they did it and cracked it loose.

At least some tire shops have ways of getting these things off. And there are YouTube videos. But it isn’t a pretty process and some of the methods I saw could cause damage to the rim if things went bad.

What I learned from this is that I do NOT want to get a flat tire 10 miles outside Moab Utah and have to change it myself with the kit supplied with the car. Way too much torque needed for what they give you. I added a breaker bar to my spare tire compartment. Actually its a torque wrench. Go to Harbor Freight tools and you find out that their torque wrench is only a couple of bucks more than their breaker bar and has the same arm length.

I also cracked and re-tightened each one of the lugs to make sure that if anything was over-torqued from the factory I would get the problem corrected in my driveway. And several were actually tightened beyond 110 ft-lb.

My suggestion for the OP is to look real hard for that socket! If you can’t find it check with the dealer and I think they can get one that is compatible with your car.

 

My 2020 came with wheel locks. As soon as I realized this I took them off and threw them away.

Taking them off was tough. I got three off by myself, but kept slipping on the fourth. The problem is, it takes a tremendous amount of torque to loosen the bolts (110 ft-lb is the spec as I recall, Volvo WTF are you thinking anyway??) and it is hard to keep a breaker bar centered while applying sufficient torque because the socket rocks on the lug. Finally, on the last one, I went to Discount Tire and asked them to try an impact wrench. Reluctantly and with great care they did it and cracked it loose.

At least some tire shops have ways of getting these things off. And there are YouTube videos. But it isn't a pretty process and some of the methods I saw could cause damage to the rim if things went bad.

What I learned from this is that I do NOT want to get a flat tire 10 miles outside Moab Utah and have to change it myself with the kit supplied with the car. Way too much torque needed for what they give you. I added a breaker bar to my spare tire compartment. Actually its a torque wrench. Go to Harbor Freight tools and you find out that their torque wrench is only a couple of bucks more than their breaker bar and has the same arm length.

I also cracked and re-tightened each one of the lugs to make sure that if anything was over-torqued from the factory I would get the problem corrected in my driveway. And several were actually tightened beyond 110 ft-lb.

My suggestion for the OP is to look real hard for that socket! If you can't find it check with the dealer and I think they can get one that is compatible with your car.

You should not use a torque wrench to loosen bolts. Not if you want to keep the calibration accurate. I'm not sure I'd trust the accuracy of a Harbor Freight torque wrench anyway. Additionally, using it to try to measure the torque that the bolt is torqued to is not accurate at all, so if you set it to 110 ft lbs and can't loosen the bolt, that does not mean it was torqued beyond 110 ft lbs.

 

According to the manual, the bolts should be torqued at 103 lbf ft.
110 lbf ft "measured" afterwards is not abnormal.

 

The reverse setting is for torquing reverse threaded fasteners. Even if it can be used as a breaker bar, that is not an accurate indication of the torque used to tighten the fastener.

 

Found they key inside the 'foam thing' in the back. Thanks!

 

All Volvo dealers have a master "key" for the locking wheel lugs. If you should ever lose it you can go there. Whenever I have a third party remove my tires, I always check the foam where the "key" goes to make sure they returned it. Once I took it to the dealer and I failed to check and of course, they forgot to put it back. Had to go back to the dealer to get it. Go figure!

 

When I purchased my car it had on the build sheet locking lug nuts. However, they were neve installed. So after reading this post I am happy about that. My car is seldom left where I would have to worry about someone stealing the wheels anyway. Thanks for the write up.

 

A wheel-lock lug that has been tightened to 110 ft-lb is very difficult to get off. The problem is that the socket is designed such that it rocks on the lug and it is hard to keep it from slipping while apply this much torque. I finally had to take it to Discount tire where they, like I, tried to crack is with a breaker bar and could not stop the socket from slipping off the lug. They finally agreed to my request, and tried an impact wrench, carefully, which worked fortunately.

I agree that some tire shops don’t hand torque the lugs, sigh - bad practice. Discount Tire hand torques lugs. I’ll bet Costco does, too, because they seem well trained.

Your statement that a torque wrench “SHOULD NOT EVER” is a claim without an argument. I have made an argument, above, on the basis of mechanical principles, of how this wrench works, and why a click wrench doesn’t care which way torque is applied, so long as the torque limit of the wrench isn’t exceeded. I have a couple of degrees in mechanical engineering, so I have a pretty fair understanding of how mechanical things work, but I could be wrong about this. Why do you think my analysis is wrong?

 

A wheel-lock lug that has been tightened to 110 ft-lb is very difficult to get off.

That's not my experience. Our XC70 had lock nuts and I haven't had any problem wiyh them in the
13 years we owned the car. I swap tires twice per year. It is important to carefully position the key
(perpendicular) on the nut and press it toward the wheel while applying force to release it.

 

As long as you use it in reverse and do not exceed the torque setting then yes, it should be fine.

But if the lugs are torqued to 103 ft lbs that does not mean you can set it to 103 ft lbs and crack them loose.

 

Yes, generally. And not-so-much in this case...maybe? What you’re saying is that it is going to take more torque to crack them loose than to torque them to spec. Yes, there is micro galling/spalling/whatevering - I don’t remember all what - that requires more torque to overcome when loosening. But Volvo has done someting interesting, if you recall. Their lug is hardened and has an integrated slip collar. I have only worked on cars that were this big or smaller, and I haven’t seen this before. My guess is that this design is intended to get more accurate stressing of the fasteners when torquing. And it stands to reason that such a design, where you have hardened surfaces running on each other, might create a situation where the torque to break the lug loose is not that different. Easy to test, but I never thought to do it. I was so focused on getting the danged wheel locks loose that I really didn’t think about this. But in general, I absolutely agree with your comment.

Volvo spared no expense, whatever their reasons for doing this - the replacements are *not* inexpensive! ;-)

 

All I can do is report my experience. My problem wasn’t one of technique. I’ve been doing my own car work for over 50 years and know how to keep a wrench centered on a fastener. And I looked over the shoulders of the people who do this for a living at Discount Tire and watched them slip off the head, again and again, just like me. It was not a problem of technique. It was a problem of how tight the wheel lock lugs were. Something wrong here. Maybe somebody was having a bad day at the factory. Maybe installing an optional feature like this is a separate manufacturing step, and something was off with the process.

By the time I was done I was upset. This could have happened on the side of the road. We regularly travel across vast, unpopulated areas of the West and Southwest, and one of the reasons I bought this car, rather than the BMW X5, is because it has a spare tire. There is no way any human being could ever remove the wheel locks on my car with the tool provided by Volvo in the spare tire kit. Fortunately I don’t like wheel locks in the first place, and dealt with the problem in my driveway rather than alongside the road 30 miles south of, like, Moab Utah.

Maybe my experience was unique, I hope so. In any event, for anybody who has wheel locks that have never been cracked since the car was new, you might want to make sure that you can loosen them with the tool in the spare tire well, or someday you may be sorry.

 

All I can do is report my experience. My problem wasn't one of technique. I've been doing my own car work for over 50 years and know how to keep a wrench centered on a fastener. And I looked over the shoulders of the people who do this for a living at Discount Tire and watched them slip off the head, again and again, just like me. It was not a problem of technique. It was a problem of how tight the wheel lock lugs were. Something wrong here. Maybe somebody was having a bad day at the factory. Maybe installing an optional feature like this is a separate manufacturing step, and something was off with the process.

By the time I was done I was upset. This could have happened on the side of the road. We regularly travel across vast, unpopulated areas of the West and Southwest, and one of the reasons I bought this car, rather than the BMW X5, is because it has a spare tire. There is no way any human being could ever remove the wheel locks on my car with the tool provided by Volvo in the spare tire kit. Fortunately I don't like wheel locks in the first place, and dealt with the problem in my driveway rather than alongside the road 30 miles south of, like, Moab Utah.

Maybe my experience was unique, I hope so. In any event, for anybody who has wheel locks that have never been cracked since the car was new, you might want to make sure that you can loosen them with the tool in the spare tire well, or someday you may be sorry.

You're not alone. My locks were also very tight, I'd estimate around 150 ft-lbs (It felt the same as the lugs on my truck, they are 150 ft-lb) The regular nuts were relatively easy.

 

The first winter I had my 2018 S90, I was driving home from a ski trip and hit a pothole which destroyed on of my tires. This was of course on a narrow mountain road in the snow. I found a shoulder where I could pull over and managed to swap the tire for the spare. The car does have the antitheft locking lugs. The key was in the back in the foam with the rest of the tools for the spare tire. As far as loosening the lug nuts, You should screw the silver towing bar into the back of the black lug nut wrench, effectively doubling its length. I carefully fit the wrench on the lug nut pointing to around 3 o'clock and keeping my arm straight, with my body oriented to keep the arm close to the car, just stand up. For example, if its a wheel on the right side of the car, I face towards the rear of the car while standing up. My legs are way stronger than my arms. I've been doing it this way for over 50 years now and I've never been stymied by an overtightened lug nut.

 

Bonjour , si les ecrou d'antivol sont d'origine VOLVO, ce dernier a un kit de douille pour devisser tous les ecrous. Dons avant de vous prendre la tete allez chez un concessionnaire. En esperant que ce post soit utile à tous