Wheel Stud Thread Lubrication

Yair . . . OFF. Yes mate I've heard that story and I have no doubt under ideal conditions it would be absolutely right.

Most of us don't work in ideal conditions and we have to contend with rust and corrosion and threads damaged by years of snugging down clamps and being subjected to dings and flattening of the crowns by wheel changes in some Godforsaken hell hole in the middle of the night.

Under real world conditions a little lube on the thread can make a whole lot of difference.

I am in no way being critical . . . just pointing out that roadside conditions can a very different environment to what that tire tech (?) ever worked in.

Cheers.

The wheel loss study paid for by the Ministry was carried out by Leeds University, the lubrication of the threads with E/O was found to be the best method of attaining the correct torque/clamping of the fasteners with on average only a 5% error margin, the lubrication or rather the lack of it is a known factor resulting in wheel loss, all the top Transport Co's that also maintain their own vehicals would oil studs and nuts.
Scrub Puller, ever hear the verbs " No Foot no Horse " so your comment "its just a bloody wheel" dont sorta get you very far when its missing, your comments might be perfect within your locality, but here and within Europe if you are found to have been the cause of any road going drama or roadside checks the " Queens Hotel " always has rooms vacant to let you think about your Nuts, the torque wrench commonly used for wheel nuts is low priced and also a legal requirement within a truck service bay, this item would be looked for when a Vosa inspection is carried out, so your comments and actions here in the U.K. could possibly cause a loss of life resulting with your calender being Booked Up for a few years.

tight nuts tctractors

p.s. S.P. I do agree on the side of the road you do what you have to do to move on, and as you said check the wheel sets after a few miles, its what would be the industry standard, but I take the oiling your nuts question as more to do with the service bay not the roadside wheel change saga.

Yair . . . tctractors. (big grin) This is a very serious subject and I thought that comment would get a bite.

Truth is losing a wheel through lost nuts/loose wheel studs is a problem that never should arise. I have never had it happen but have sacked a few who have . . . not lost wheels but flogged out bolt holes or spiders.

It is inexcusable and I say again you have to check them several times in the next fifty miles . . . if folks want to trust some twit with a rattle gun it is completely up to them.

About two years ago just on daylight I found a truck wheel hot and smoking laying in the middle of the fairway of the golf course. I back tracked it by the bounce marks and found where it had taken out the fence and it was obvious it had come off a truck heading south on the highway. From memory it was a twenty two inch tyre on an aluminium wheel a good inch thick . . . the bolt holes were flogged out and it was obvious what had happened.

I had never seen such a wheel setup and surmised there must have been some extra nuts holding on the inner. I believed it to be a dangerous situation as the studs would have had a pounding and there was every chance the inner nuts were loose and sheared studs were on the cards. I rang triple "0" as I had got no response from the local police number at that hour of the morning.

I explained to the 000 operator that there was a truck loose on the highway in imminent danger of loosing a second wheel and suggested the police get a unit out of the town eighty kays south to check on south bound trucks.

Well I copped a bloody earful from her supervisor . . . the emergency triple zero number was for emergency's only and what was my name and address.

I told him to get stuffed and hung up and to this day don't know what happened . . . I think the club made fifty bucks on the tyre and sold the wheel for scrap.

The point to the story being that "the authorities" don't seem to take such carry ons very seriously over here.

Cheers.

Always used oil as anti seize dries out...
Never lost a wheel or any I've fitted come loose.
Personally I dislike anti seize with a passion. Normal grease or oil is my preferred lube for fitting things.

I agree with Scrub.... Real world... Talk to that mechanic in a few years... He'll have changed his tune...

Gotta Fly...
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In some parts of Canada a lost wheel warrants a $50,000 fine. The only way to reduce/get out of the fine is to prove due diligence by providing shop records that all repairs were properly carried out. Most likely requiring a certificate of calibration for your torque wrench.

No Ossifer

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No Ossifer, That's not "MY" wheel.... I left the yard with only three....
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Gotta Fly...

johndeere123 said:

In some parts of Canada a lost wheel warrants a $50,000 fine. The only way to reduce/get out of the fine is to prove due diligence by providing shop records that all repairs were properly carried out. Most likely requiring a certificate of calibration for your torque wrench.

Click to expand...

And the Canadian red seal exam for truck and transport mechanic says no lube. So if your wheel passes you on the highway your studs better be dry!

Yair . . . this is an interesting thread.

In some parts of Canada a lost wheel warrants a $50,000 fine. The only way to reduce/get out of the fine is to prove due diligence by providing shop records that all repairs were properly carried out. Most likely requiring a certificate of calibration for your torque wrench.

Click to expand...

johndeere123. So if you your Landrover is in to the tyre shop for a set of tyres they run the nuts on with an air gun and do the final torque with a certified calibrated torque wrench? . . . I ask because I just spent half an hour waiting for my wife in front of a busy tyre court and there is certainly no hand torqueing over here.

The issues of liability raised here are enormous and ridiculous. Who is responsible, the driver or the owner of the vehicle or trailer?

Give us a break.

How could a driver be responsible for oil on wheel studs . . . who knows how it got there. How many drivers check the torque on their wheel studs before they embark on a trip.

It all seems a bit over the top and, as with many rules and regulations we are supposed to abide by it would seem common sense does not apply.

Cheers.

Scrub Puller said:

The issues of liability raised here are enormous and ridiculous. Who is responsible, the driver or the owner of the vehicle or trailer?

Give us a break.

How could a driver be responsible for oil on wheel studs . . . who knows how it got there. How many drivers check the torque on their wheel studs before they embark on a trip.

It all seems a bit over the top and, as with many rules and regulations we are supposed to abide by it would seem common sense does not apply.

Cheers.

Click to expand...

That question is simple: here in the US, a commercial driver is responsible for all safety checks of his vehicle. Of course, the carrier, insurance companies, etc. will be sued if a case is filed, but criminal charges follow the driver.

Ever see a 250 pound 24.5" wheel coming at your face at 130 mph? Neither have I, nor do I want to. But it resulted in a death just blocks from my shop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aox4wjeRiSs

At the end of the day, any vehicle on the road is a potential weapon if unsafe, and ought to be regarded as such.

Yair . . . Catback

here in the US, a commercial driver is responsible for all safety checks of his vehicle.

Click to expand...

I don't know what the situation is here . . . maybe some Aussie truckers could chime in.

Don't get me wrong I am not making light of a serious situation . . . likewise it is difficult to accept that some engine oil on wheel studs is an offence.

Actually I have seen wheels come off on a couple of occasions. In both cases though the duals came off as a unit and I believe wheel studs were not at fault . . . and I have lost a rear wheel on a C1300 International pickup which ended up smashing a glass door and television in the lounge room of a very fancy house, no one hurt but I was pulling some sparks off the roadway and the sight of that wheel smashing through the door is forever etched in my mind.

That model Inter had disk brakes all round and the axle used to break level with the outer bearing.

No safety checks would have ever prevented that so who would be responsible for any death or injury? . . . Me or International for their poor design/manufacture.

Cheers.

Oil on the threads

If this is truly an issue wouldn't engines ,transmissions ,and differentials be falling apart as they run in a bath of oil ? Me thinks it has more to do with getting the proper torque & stretch on a bolt that keeps it tight rather than relying on the friction of dry threads in this application . When changing a wheel with a little rust on the studs it takes a little lube on the threads to achieve proper torque in my experience .

Hey Scrub:

I don't think you're making the matter light at all.

However, proper torqueing (w/ or w/o oil, antiseize or what have you) is independent of "wheel studs being at fault." Obviously, if a stud is stripped (or damaged beyond safe use): it should not be used. Obviously, if a stud is oily or greasy, it should be cleaned, or torques appropriately.

My point is simple: with ten lug nuts, one loose nut will not make a wheel fly off. If one nut comes loose, an inspection of all the nuts is warranted, and dare I say necessary.

Stud nut markers are cheap and provide a simple visual inspection to ascertain no nuts are loose. Markers are doubly useful if the nuts are improperly torqued or not torqued at all.

Cheers.

I think so, as most nuts on an engine or differential are not removed [sometimes every year depending on mileage and whether virgin, retread or used tires are install, as well as inflation] commonly, and apparently sometimes unprofessionally, and are not under the centrifugal forces that a wheel has, nor do they often require the torque (sometimes 550 ft. lbs) that a lug nut does.

This topic has caused some very interesting and surprising comments, in the U.K. we walk around with oil cans at the ready,it would seem in the U.S. and Canada you need a duster to mop up anything on a thread, but I will say that the wheel fixing is possibly a factor to take in, the U.K. and Europe seem to have gone away from the taper cone style fixing, this is an angle on the stud and an angle on the nut putting the truck loading directly onto the stud, the common way now is with the truck loading going through the spigot of the wheel onto the centre part of the hub, the wheel nuts and studs only clamp the wheel to the hub, the nut has a washer incorperated within its structure, also there is studs and nuts for steel rims only and studs and nuts for alloy wheels both types are clearly marked, as I have already said our oil cans come in handy around these items, also in the U.K. it is a usual task before the onset of winter to strip all the wheels off trailers (trailors) to clean up the spigot mounting and paint on copper slip in this area to ensure wheel removal at the roadside if need be due to a blow out etc, we do have good axle loadings here with 12 m-ton axle lines being common outside C&U rules plus we do have 15/16 m-ton axle lines on step frames with 8 stud fastening with thick dish wheels 16-18 mm running at reduced speeds, our roads are not under differing weights so the motorway and the little road are all set at the same level,I have never torque set a Cylinder head bolt or a big end cap nut without using my oil can!
tctractors

P.S. Scrub Puller, with all these wheels flying past your ears do you think you should "oil your nuts" (with a big grin) tc

In the past there were trucks and trailers with both kinds of nuts in the states now i think most are going to the washed kind were the weight is on the wheel center. I never liked the ones were the studs held the weight.

Yair . . . tctractors. Yeah, yeah, gotcha mate. I am completely unfamiliar with the current ways of attaching wheels so I've probably been talking B/S.

I was quite amazed when I found that aluminium wheel on the golf course as I had only seen such disk wheels as steer wheel fitments and realised things must have moved on from spider wheels and clamps . . . and the fourpound lump hammer standing near the tyre as you spun the wheel to make sure you tightened true.

One of the sets duals I saw detach flew of an ACCO water truck. I was one bench up on a scraper and I reckon on the first bounce into the cut those wheels bounced a couple of hundred feet . . . apparently a lock nut or retainer of some sort failed and let it loose. Second was on the highway and I don't know if they ever found the wheels.

I had no trouble finding my wheel off the Inter . . . it was imbedded in the screen of the TV and balanced rather nice.

Cheers,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLRSd4BsHpc Here's the rest of the story of the fatality near Milwaukee, the wheel is shown at 2:00, the whole center cracked out of the rim and the outside let loose. The truck is shown at 1:35 but I can't tell what it shows other than the driver might not have seen the cracked rim because of "chrome wheel simulators".

The driver picked up a load in Green Bay so he only drove about 100 miles before the incident, should have seen something wrong in Green Bay. Hard to say what the driver would be charged with, could have been nothing or it just as likely could have been negligent homicide?

Yair . . . Delmer. Thanks for that video.

It rather looks like wheel studs were not a factor and the guts pulled right out of the wheel. You would hope that a service department might pick up cracks before they got to that stage.

An awful situation with a multitude of victims.

May it all be resolved fairly.

If DOT sees oil, or antiseeze on studs you will get a 100 dollar fine for every stud. You can't get a tire shop to put anything on the threads. DOT's theory is that if rust forms on thread it will prevent nut from loosening. It is not however against the law to oil the nut and washer only not the threads on nut. Tire shops say that is the way to get proper torque as the nut is not binding against the washer. We also check wheel torque once a month.