diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 1b47f18fd75..cd2823cf770 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -245,6 +245,9 @@ Bug Fixes
     and avoid use of "find -maxdepth" on platforms where it is not
     supported. (yonik)
 
+12. SOLR-222: Changing writeLockTimeout in solrconfig.xml did not
+    change the effective timeout. (Koji Sekiguchi via yonik)
+
  
 Other Changes
  1. Updated to Lucene 2.1
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/solr/core/SolrCore.java b/src/java/org/apache/solr/core/SolrCore.java
index 8918b6d073c..52038408709 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/solr/core/SolrCore.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/solr/core/SolrCore.java
@@ -32,6 +32,7 @@ import java.util.logging.Logger;
 import javax.xml.xpath.XPathConstants;
 
 import org.apache.lucene.index.IndexReader;
+import org.apache.lucene.index.IndexWriter;
 import org.apache.lucene.search.BooleanQuery;
 import org.apache.lucene.store.Directory;
 import org.apache.lucene.store.FSDirectory;
@@ -84,6 +85,7 @@ public final class SolrCore {
 
   static {
     BooleanQuery.setMaxClauseCount(SolrConfig.config.getInt("query/maxBooleanClauses",BooleanQuery.getMaxClauseCount()));
+    if (mainIndexConfig.writeLockTimeout != -1) IndexWriter.setDefaultWriteLockTimeout(mainIndexConfig.writeLockTimeout);
   }
 
 
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/solr/update/SolrIndexWriter.java b/src/java/org/apache/solr/update/SolrIndexWriter.java
index 1c3a530737b..39c8477a977 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/solr/update/SolrIndexWriter.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/solr/update/SolrIndexWriter.java
@@ -51,8 +51,7 @@ public class SolrIndexWriter extends IndexWriter {
       if (config.maxMergeDocs != -1) setMaxMergeDocs(config.maxMergeDocs);
       if (config.mergeFactor != -1)  setMergeFactor(config.mergeFactor);
       if (config.maxFieldLength != -1) setMaxFieldLength(config.maxFieldLength);
-      if (config.writeLockTimeout != -1) setWriteLockTimeout(config.writeLockTimeout);
-      if (config.commitLockTimeout != -1) setWriteLockTimeout(config.commitLockTimeout);
+      //if (config.commitLockTimeout != -1) setWriteLockTimeout(config.commitLockTimeout);
     }
 
   }