Need engineers thoughts on wheel offset
Travel trailer wheels have either a centered or outside offset. My question is this. I have outside offset wheels and have sheared off wheel bolts on 2 different wheels I have weighed everything and I...
Forum Discussion
pickjare wrote:
Consider how many cars and trucks on the road have wheels with all sorts of different offsets. I am not an engineer, but if wheel offset caused, or cured, wheel studs from breaking, I think we would have learned this from them. look at your wheel lug holes real close. If any one is elongated or worn, the wheel needs replaced. If every hole is good you might try retorquing the nuts after towing 10 miles--or 100 miles or both.
well...... virtually all cars and light trucks on the road today have hub centric wheels. that is the wheel hub is a very tight fit to the axle hub. So..... the hub takes ALL the vertical load on the axle, the lugs keep it from sliding off and take any horizontal load.
Virtually all utility and travel trailers (U-haul is one exception, most or all uhaul trailers have hub centric wheels) have LUG centric wheels, so the center is a loose fit on the hub so the lugs must take ALL the vertical AND horizontal forces on the wheel. Big difference.
that's one reason retorquing is so important on trailers. And the OP isn't the first person to have problems with lugs shearing on trailer axles. if lug nuts get loose it doesn't take long for the lug centric wheel to beat the **** out of the lugs.
I suspect any non zero offset puts even more force on the lugs.
