Really serious wheel issue (somebody could've gotten killed by this)

RickB · September 22, 2010, 06:29:40 PM

Hey all,

Went over to a friends with a 4903 today and brought the transmission guy Ken I told you all about earlier this year. Well we're looking at my buddy's brand new accuride aluminum wheels and Firestone 400's and Ken (dude has eagle eyes) notices some aluminum shavings around the brand new lugs. Well, it turns out that these wheels are metric and long story short they will have to have the correct lugs machined by a fabricator because the stud chamfer angles are way different than stock lug nuts for our buses. They had already started loosening and it would have not taken much more driving on them for the wheels to become violently unbalanced and crack the rims and God knows how many folks would have been injured or killed.

I know we have had alot of discussions about stretching lugs but we all need to be really careful when we decide to switch over to Truck tire sizes for convenience sake.

Rick

luvrbus · September 22, 2010, 07:56:10 PM

Rick, your friend does know the outside nuts comes in different degree of angles on the seat of the nut doesn't he if you put the wrong degree of nut for the wheel it will cut the aluminum wheel sometimes it will even crack those high dollar wheels

good luck

gus · September 23, 2010, 12:52:23 PM

I'm confused, is the problem bolts or nuts?

Len Silva · September 23, 2010, 12:53:21 PM

Are you sure he isn't using hub piloted wheels?

prevost82 · September 24, 2010, 02:39:18 PM

Quote from: Len Silva on September 23, 2010, 12:53:21 PM
Are you sure he isn't using hub piloted wheels?

That's what it sounds like to me ....

RickB · September 24, 2010, 03:19:44 PM

Just for clarificatipn these were stud piloted wheels. The problem is the taper or chamfer on tge rims wad different than the taper on the lugs. When those surfaces don't interlock you run a strong possibility of cracking and losing the wheel.

Dreamscape · September 24, 2010, 04:57:21 PM

Quote from: luvrbus on September 22, 2010, 07:56:10 PM
Rick, your friend does know the outside nuts comes in different degree of angles on the seat of the nut doesn't he if you put the wrong degree of nut for the wheel it will cut the aluminum wheel sometimes it will even crack those high dollar wheels

good luck

I would think that Clifford identified the problem in his post! I sure hope he didn't ruin his wheels. But thank goodness he caught it before something bad happened.

Paul