Home Forums Gear Hunting Trucks and Four-Wheel Drives Ruh-ro!

Coming back from lunch today I noticed some vibration up front once I got on the highway. Figured the wheel bearing must be going out so headed towards the stealership. Only got part way there when the vibration started getting more severe so figured I should pull over and check it out.

Good thing I pulled over when I did!!!



Found these on the ground nearby



Fortunately the sole remaining lug kept the wheel in place to get it on the tow truck and off to the shop.

Wow! Who handled the lug wench?

Me

I used a torque wrench and sequentially torque each bolt in a criss cross pattern. Haven't let a tire shop monkey touch the trucks wheels in probably 100k. I do use a rattle gun to remove the lug nuts, but use a torque stick when re-installing them and then finish them off with a torque wrench.

Next time you torque them, turn them to the RIGHT.

I'm betting you need a new hub. If the threads weren't stripped before, I bet they are now.

Lugnut cone angle correct? Or does someone have it in for you?

Yes, got the lugnut's with the wheels from the tire shop. Looking at the contact pattern on the lug on my desk it looks like it was properly bearing on the wheel.

Weird deal as I've got about 30k miles on the wheels, rotate them ~7500 miles and I rotated them at the beginning of the summer so have put quite a few miles on them before this happened.

There have been a lot of bad places this could have happened, so I'm actually very thankful it happened where it did, when it did. Much rather be standing on the side of the road in the sun than the side of the road at -20 in the dark.

Did that with the Semi going up Snoqualmie last year. Except the last one did come off.....

Brief moment of great excitement.......

I had a wheel almost do that. I blamed the tire shop I had it at a week before. They took care of me. Ten years later I'm chatting with the neighbor kid when he confessed to doing it. Not sure who felt worse about it. The tire guy thought it was funny so that was good.

Here's a pic of a trailer rim that came loose. It was a gooseneck loaded with 7.5 tons of hay. Noticed something weird going on and pulled over.

Corrosion or scale buildup on the hub that prevented the wheel from seating fully?

Many years ago Dad had a '64 Chev 3/4 ton that he used to haul a camper. It came with split rim, 8 hole wheels. He was going down a long hill at about 60 when a front wheel came off. He somehow, miraculously, kept it on the road, even with the big overshot camper on top.
The center of the wheel had torn out, leaving a jagged disk still tightly bolted to the hub. A week later, before he'd replaced the wheel, he got a recall letter from GM. He immediately went to the local Chev dealer and they installed 5 new wheels. Another week or so after that, he got a 2d letter saying they were only recalling the wheels that showed signed of failing. He didn't bother to return them.

BTW - for some unknown reason, the truck wasn't damaged other than a lot of scrapes on the hub. The brake, etc should have been trashed but it wasn't.

Different problem here. Discount Tire has broken 6 studs total on two different Tacomas from over tightening then with a pneumatic drive.r

All the times I have been to Discount, they always use a torque wrench. Seen stuff come off with an impact but never on.

The wheels on a Tacoma have counterbores that the nuts must go into. If they start them and then hit them with the impact driver, they don't necessarily start right, so the guys just keep at it and it will snap lug studs off pretty easily. Then at times they are afraid to notify the manager and get the nut to stick on the loose stud. You don't know it until you take the wheel off the next time.

If they do notify the manager , they give you a coupon to take to Brakes Plus to replace the stud. Another 2-3 hours wasted and those guys at Brake Plus are a bunch of thieves. They will try and find other things to have to be fixed. I have had them create problems even.

Any idea where all of the bits and pieces were made?

Well, it's an "American" truck, which means bits and pieces could be from the US, or Canada, or Mexico. The bolts weren't defective, the vibration when the bearing went out was so great that as best I can tell it caused the studs to fail in fatigue failure, and with threads being a stress riser, no big surprise.

All's good and well, trucks back with a rebuilt front end and my wallet is much lighter. Had them put in a fresh pair of batteries, (got 8 years from the originals) and had them do a coolant flush while in the shop. So I should be good to go for quite a while.