Sheared Clean Off

[Windy Wilson]

A friend of mine drove home from Mammoth in the Eastern Sierras to his home in Los Angeles, and when he pulled into his garage to stop the front right wheel fell off. And that was after zooming through the snow and down the big Sherwin Grade into Bishop.

[blackeagle603]

Car a couple lengths up and lane to the right of me lost a rear wheel on the way in yesterday morning on the 8. Big honking 22" rim about 12" of tread.

That was interesting, when the car dropped the driver did a good job of seeing a gap and getting it to the shoulder right away. To the right of me, rear body/bumper chunks were flying all over.
To the left the loose wheel carromed across in front about 3 lengths as I slowed. It finally hit a Corolla or Sentra sized sedan in the rear before rolling to a stop at the median. Thought for a bit as it tracked bouncing toward that car it might go into a window.

Yee hah, "Now hear this, rig the barricade I repeat, rig the barricade."

[First Shirt]

Yee hah, "Now hear this, rig the barricade I repeat, rig the barricade."

You can take the boy out of the Navy, but it's really hard to get the Navy out of the boy.

[Yogimus]

Over-under on "Sears/Walmart autocenter" being involved?

[Cybrludite]

Chris, looks like your missing wheel landed in Russia...

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/flying-tire-c ... socialflow

[PawPaw]

Chris, looks like your missing wheel landed in Russia...

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/flying-tire-c ... socialflow

I don't know why, but that's the funniest thing I've seen lately. My ribs hurt from ROFL. Oh, I'm in dire need of a vacation.

[evan price]

I have seen on trailers that have not had the wheels off often they will get moisture trapped in the cavity formed around the lug stud between the lug nut and the hub face, inside the wheel hole. This will rust the stud in that one spot and cause failure.

Here's an example of what I was talking about. I'm getting our travel trailer ready for a road trip and that includes checking brakes, new tires, etc. and on this trailer last trip out we blew out a tire- which caused other damage- and when I tried to change it the lug nuts were rusted pretty bad.


This is one of the lug studs from the trailer. If you look at the base of the threads (About 4-5 threads up from the splined section) you can see some pretty bad pitting in the threads. The picture doesn't show depth as well as I'd like and I tried several backgrounds to try to get better contrast. Those pits are easily 1/8" deep in the worst spots, and go all the way around the stud. This area on the stud is where the wheel rim bolt holes sit when the wheel is installed on the hub and the lug nut tightened down. There is obviously a little clearance to allow the wheel to fit over the studs and this forms a cavity between the top face of the brake drum hub, the bottom of the lug nut, and inside the steel wheel hub flange. Moisture gets in here and is trapped and it rusts the lug stud, causing the pitting and weakening the stud. This one isn't that bad, I've seen them with much more wasting in this spot, but all of them that look like this are being changed out. Needless to say I bought a set of 25 new lug nuts and a bunch of studs.

Trailers get a lot of side loading on the wheels, more than a car or truck would see, due to how the trailer has to pivot especially in tight turns. If the stud gets weak in this area, you can't see it. The lug nut isn't unscrewing. The wheel is still tight on the hub. The stud just gets weaker and weaker until one day when you are running the trailer it snaps off. Then the load gets shifted to the remainder of the studs, which are probably weak, and they snap off. Then you lose a wheel.

Just FYI, if you live in anyplace where things rust, pull your wheels & inspect your studs. Cars, trucks, trailers, equipment, etc.