Check your lug nuts!

[RoyBell]

While traveling for the holidays I seen the wheel come flying off a fiver right in front of me! It went bouncing off the road and down an off ramp!

I got up next to the guy and started flagging him down to pull over. He eventually noticed me and immediately pulled over. It tore the side of him camper up pretty good, so not sure what happened. Just glad I saw it and was able to get his attention. The couple semis right next to me just sped up and kept on their way and didn't bother telling the fella. I have tire pressure sensors for this very reason. He had no idea he had lost a wheel until I flagged him down. I am not sure how long it could had gone on a single tire with the weight of a larger camper like that before it eventually blew the remaining tire.

Let this be a lesson to always check your lug nuts. I had my bearings packed over winter by my storage place. I will def. double check tightness when I pick it up now!

[afidel]

abom2 wrote:
I had a wheel come off once. Found that three studs had sheared. Checked wheel on same side on the forward axle. Found two lug nuts loose.
...
Yep, I am paranoid...lol

Justifiably so! When I bought my current car it was used but had new looking Goodyear tires on it. Three months later there was cracking in the sidewall of one of the tires so I had it replaced under warranty as the date code was less than a year old so even though I didn't have the receipt it was obviously covered (good tread life). A few weeks after that I had a blowout at 55, not fun. I had the spare put on and drove it directly to my favorite tire place. I told them to replace all 4 tires. They told me that those were basically brand new tires, I explained what had happened, they told me to take it to the local Goodyear shop and that they would be replaced for free. I told them there was no way in hell I was going to have any tires from that series put on my car after having a cracked sidewall and a blowout in less than a month. And before anyone asks, yes I check my tire pressure on a regular basis and make sure they are to manufacturer specs and they were not run in any kind of extreme conditions. The replacements made it to ~65k miles of their 85k mile rated life, quite good imho.

[babock]

TBammer wrote:
Yup, I saw a study showing that the cheap HF torque wrench is actually purdy darn accurate. Just make sure you back off the tightener nut on the end when storing.

I thought so too until I wiped out a fastener doing suspension work. I threw all the HF torque wrenches away and bought all new CDI wrenches.

BTW...make sure you always store your torque wrenches with the spring/dial setting the torque all the way to zero.

[TBammer]

mr. ed wrote:
A torque wrench doesn't need to be expensive. I bought mine at harbor freight at a very reasonable price. Every so often, I would re-torque all the wheel lugs on my fiver. Good peace of mind while traveling.

Yup, I saw a study showing that the cheap HF torque wrench is actually purdy darn accurate. Just make sure you back off the tightener nut on the end when storing.

[dave54]

babock wrote:
The people I know that have lost wheels due to sheared lugs have a common denominator. All had greased the threads and likely over torqued the nuts.

I never grease the threads unless the specs call for it.

A common cause of sheared bolts is after torquing to specs, the incremental increase over time by repeated checking. Every time you check there is very slight increase in tightening. Over time it all adds up.
So don't just throw on the torque wrench and check. Back it off and retorque.

[hotpepperkid]

If my wheels have been off for any reason I torque at the first rest stop and again at the next 2 rest stops, than a week later and every month after that. Generally after the 2nd rest stop there is no movement of the lug nuts

[Cummins12V98]

I'm betting the cone type lug nuts are more likely to come loose than the clamping type.

Mine have never needed tightening with this type after an initial PROPER torque.

[babock]

The people I know that have lost wheels due to sheared lugs have a common denominator. All had greased the threads and likely over torqued the nuts.

[PawPaw_n_Gram]

RoyBell wrote:
Do you have a signal booster?

Yes, wired directly to the batteries.

Talked to the company after this, and they recommended moving the booster from the front of the trailer directly to UNDER the trailer no more than 15 feet from any wheel.

They said the signal from the sensors to the booster will have a less obstructed path which will result in a more reliable signal.

But their software does not consider a “loss of signal” a major alarm.

It is kind of hard to test a LOS alarm because you have to take the battery out of the sensor without unscrewing the sensor from the valve stem.

But as with any tool, it works a lot better if we take the time to test its strong points and weak points and to RTFM

[1320Fastback]

Gulfcoast wrote:
What is the correct torque for lug nuts?

My trailer has a data tag on the front near the manufacturers GVWR ect tag that is for the torque of the lugs. Gives values for both Aluminum and Steel wheels.

[dave54]

DrewE wrote:

Gulfcoast wrote:
What is the correct torque for lug nuts?

It depends on your vehicle or trailer and what wheels it's equipped with and that sort of thing.

My car is either 80 lb-ft or 90 lb-ft; I don't remember which offhand, and don't feel like going out to look it up. My class C is 140 lb-ft. Large wheels on heavier duty vehicles often go a lot higher, such as something like 800 lb-ft for many 22.5" wheels.

I never trust my memory for things like that. I have the torque specs in the notepad app on my phone (along with a bunch of other frequently used numbers and settings) The axle manual recommends a three step tightening at 25, 60, and 95 lbs-ft.

[abom2]

I had a wheel come off once. Found that three studs had sheared. Checked wheel on same side on the forward axle. Found two lug nuts loose.

Checked the right side of trailer. Both wheels were good and tight. Torque wrench confirmed minimum torque on each lug nut.

Ended up calling Mobile Tech. Replaced both left side hubs/bearings/etc.

Fast forward 10 months later. Job in FL over travel back to Houston. All ok. No problems. Six weeks later heading out to AZ. I get five miles from house and see smoke coming off of left rear tire. Pull into parking lot. I thought maybe a hung brake shoe. Climb under trailer to check. I see hub is backed off at least 1 inch from shield and I can see brake pads. Call Mobil Tech.

He jacks up trailer and pulls the whole wheel assembly off of the spindle. No lug nuts loosened. Just pulls the whole thing off. Uh-Oh. His boss says I need a new axle. Will take at least 3 months and a huge tow bill to fix.

That won't work. I need to be in AZ for work in three days. I look at my mess and see the inner seal is still on spindle and the grease is a nice silver color with metal flake in it. I clean it up, remove the wheel from the hub and do an inventory. Inner bearing is missing (refer to silver grease with metal flake), six washers (!), castle nut, and a finger washer with the tips broken/bent.

I pulled the forward wheel assembly and did a quick Sesame Street Inspection. Yep the forward does not look exactly like the rear one. Forward has a normal configuration.

I am glad I travel with a compressor, large wrenches, and two 10 ton jacks. The jacks can be raised manually or with air.

Locate a trailer mfg/dealer that has the parts, speaks the lingo, is only 40 miles away, and is reasonably priced.

Spoke with the Store Manager whose parking lot I was in and explained the situation along with assurance I would be out of his way ASAP one way or the other. Left DW with RV and I took off for parts with the axle and 5th wheel information.

Gentleman at the parts/mfg facility pulled the information on the axle and measured my two hubs I had removed from the RV. He also looked up the hub information from it's mfg.

He found that the hubs put on by the previous Mobile Tech were not quite 100% correct for my axles. Anyway, he had all of the parts I needed to completely replace/rebuild the wheel/hub assemblies. Along with the installation and illustrated parts breakdown.

I purchased enough to do all four wheels, plus extra castle nuts. I had a gut feeling on this. (Remember the extra washers)

I am glad I purchased extra grease, rags, and that I carry a 4 ft long adjustable wrench (Crescent). While cleaning the grease off the bad wheel with the extra washers, I found the castle nut cross threaded and the threads laid over but it might be corrected if I was careful. I was wishing for a thread chaser at that moment.

Before I did any thing else I carefully removed the cross threaded nut using a liberal amount of grease on the threads as I slowly removed it. Once off, I cleaned the area and applied a liberal amount of fresh grease. Starting the new castle nut it wanted to follow the cross thread pattern. I squared the nut by tapping with a punch, hammer, socket, crescent, and wood block as needed to keep it square to the spindle axis. With all of the grease I was able to chase the threads square the whole length. I was able to remove the nut with my fingers. I was then able to quite holding my breath.

I only use my air tools to remove and use manual wrenches for assembly. It took about 2 hours to do both wheels on left side of the trailer.

After picking up my stuff and making sure my area was cleaner than I found it, I skinned out of my dirty clothes, took a shower, put on clean clothes, and headed out to test drive my work.

I was stopping every 1 to 2 miles for the first 10 miles checking temperatures with the temp gun and checking the lug nuts. No changes. I continued circling the area on the local highways slowly working up to highway speeds of 65 and 70.

I stopped at 20 miles to check everything and again at 30 miles. At 40 miles I did have a little loosening on the lug nuts and temps were low at 90 degrees on the brake shield and hub. Tire temps were around 80.

I checked everything again at 50 and determined with DW to take a gamble and start heading west to AZ. We traveled another 70 miles down I-10 and it was close to 10 pm so I pulled into a rest area for the night. I checked the temps and torque and went to sleep.

Up early before the sun I checked everything prior to hitting the road. Traveled 50 miles or so and found a place for breakfast. I really wanted to check my work, so getting breakfast was a good excuse. All is well.

I made another 100 miles before my next check and to top off the main fuel tank. Everything went well all the way to Phoenix. I checked temps and torque every single stop. I am way paranoid about this now.

Anyway, only the good Lord knows why the left side failed originally, and I suspect the Mobile Tech who fixed it that time did not do his very best. What I do know is that I am paranoid about these things now and I do not see myself every changing my routine now of checking temps and torque at every little stop. Heck, I have checked my lug nuts four times in the last year and the RV has not moved since I am living in it while at this current project.

Yep, I am paranoid...lol

[fj12ryder]

Engineers can be some pretty bizarre people. 🙂

[DrewE]

fj12ryder wrote:
Actually the correct term is "pound-foot". Pound-foot is a unit of torque, foot-pound is a unit of energy. 🙂

Tighten lug nuts to 100 lb. ft., but an engine can develop 100 ft. lbs of torque.

Courtesy of the pedantry department. 🙂

The engine specification is still referring to torque here and hence should, by your dictum, also be expressed as pound-feet. It might be better to say that Sisyphus did 100 ft lbs of work with each step when rolling his stone up the mountain (and so expended 100 ft lbs of energy).

Apparently from some googling at one point the SAE decreed that static torque would use pound-feet, and dynamic torque foot-pounds. If true, that's just plain bizarre.

[fj12ryder]

Actually the correct term is "pound-foot". Pound-foot is a unit of torque, foot-pound is a unit of energy. 🙂

Tighten lug nuts to 100 lb. ft., but an engine can develop 100 ft. lbs of torque.

Courtesy of the pedantry department. 🙂