Sloppy Wheel Brace Holden Colorado

There Yet - It's not a problem confined to just Colorado wheelbraces. What generally causes it, is the conflict between metric and imperial (inch) measurements, that the U.S. still doggedly uses.
As the Colorado is sold in the U.S. (as a Chevrolet Colorado), there will no doubt have been some conflict between the Chinese producing metric and imperial wheelbraces (and have no doubt, the wheelbraces will be Chinese-made).

Despite the Colorado being all-metric, someone in China will probably have deemed the wrench needed is in inch sizing, because they thought all the Colorados went to America.
Either that, or some Chinese tool producer will have decided that a close inch-sized wheelbrace can be re-stamped with a close metric size.

Or .. some peasant in the tool factory who was working in a rice paddy last week, before he got transferred to a factory job, has no clue about what all these funny English numbers and letters mean, and he just grabbed the nearest wheelbrace box and supplied them for the order.

You see this in the bolt sizing in places such as Masters, and to a lesser extent, Bunnings. You get "inch" bolts that are essentially metric equivalents.
Masters major source of supplies is Lowes, the American company (their JV partner in Masters), and Lowes order everything for the American market - in inch sizing.
As a result, Masters are selling more stuff with obsolete inch sizing dimensions on it, than they are selling metric sizes.
It's a shambles, just like we still have wheel and tyre dimensions in mixtures of inch and metric sizing.

Cheers, Ron.

checked my 2013 Colorado and no problem
brian

A few yeas ago one of my brothers in law bought a demo 100 series Landcruiser. As part of his trip around Oz he decided to have a look at Purnulu National Park (Bungle Bungle??)
The car came with the standard road/comfort orientated tyres and on the way in he destroyed one of them. No worries, out with the nice new never used set of bits and bobs that came with the jack.
Unfortunately whomever was responsible for packing all the extender parts left one out so he couldn't unwind the little winch arrangement that holds the spare up under the car.
Fortunately one of the park rangers happened by and got him out of the poo. The bloke also gave him a quick lesson on tyre selection if he was planning any more off road adventures.
We found out later that this oversight was common to quite a few 2006 model build dates of that particular vehicle.

Cheers
Pop

Solution: Go and buy a 12V impact wrench with a good set of sockets. They also come in handy removing the very tight nuts on the suspension and in our case a shockie. It took ages to undo even with the impact wrench. And before someone says it - I was turning it in the correct direction.

What about getting the right torque. I have never in 50 years heard of anyone actually doing up wheel nuts with a torque wrench. Kind of a huge overkill in my opinion. And no I have never had a wheel nut come loose either.

Our 12V impact (I think an NCH brand) wrench has done a superb job in 5 years use with changing the wheel sets each trip, both before and after the trip. We don't use the offroad tyres around town or on a "highway drive".

Phil

I have totally abandoned the use of factory wheel braces ..... all our vehicles including the wifes RAV now carry a 2 foot breaker bar and a correct socket for the vehicle.

now even the slightly built handbrake can undoo wheel nuts ..... even if they have been done up with a rattle gun.

these items are cheap enough these days.

cheers