Broke down south of Chicargo.

[bobofthenorth]

It sounds like these studs failed after being reassembled with damage already present.  There's a lesson for all of us here.  At the time I expect John thought he was saving a few bucks by reusing the studs that he had just abused to get the wheel off.  Probably now he wishes he had spent the few bucks up front.  There ain't no shortcuts to success - reusing damaged parts is p-poor economy.  I'm not dumping on you John, BTDT myself, many times.  I've never regretted doing a job right the first time but plenty of times I have wished I had done it that way.

[NJT 5573]

Dallas,

I was pretty considerate of your position in this. You did let this unit out of your shop and now it almost lost a wheel. Telling someone it might come off before they leave the shop in my opinion is not a good business practice.

Every tire shop I deal with has experienced tire people. Mainly Les Schuab Tire. Some of their commercial guys that work on my equipment have been there over 30 years. If I even thought that a McDonalds type was doing my tires I would move on. Tires are a huge part of the transportation industry and most positions are well paid career jobs. There is nothing to be ashamed of if you are in the tire business and I am thankful that I am serviced by the competent people that I am.

I don't believe that tight lugs will cause a wheel center to fail. A wheel center will not fail quickly in my opinion. They start cracking between the bolt holes and work from there. There is ample time to catch something like this through inspections and tire swaps if everyone is doing their jobs.

We lost a wheel that had all new inner studs on Yogi's truck about 20 years ago. No damages thankfully. WSP showed up and kept the studs to investigate. They were to soft, someone made them out of the wrong steel.
It would not have mattered how they were torqued they were going to fail.

No, I really don't have alot of trucks on the road everyday. The most I run is 9. I do however have more than 3 trailers for each truck, and that keeps alot of rubber in the mix.

More than once we have had to torch outer studs off equipment, but the only wheel we have ever lost (10 years ago) came back to a bearing retainer, never over tightened studs. We all break one sometimes, but DOT allows you to stay in service with 2 broken as long as they are not side by side.

I'll stick with what I said, tight wheels don't come off around here, and loose one do.

I have alot of respect for you Dallas and in no way am I trying to belittle you. I know that you ran your fleet out of the Spokane area and know well the roads and weather conditions you have experienced and have no reason to doubt anything you say. We all have had different experiences with equipment however and there is always room to kick things around a little. Most times everyone is looking to place blame somewhere, but the more you do this the more you know that no matter what you do, things are gonna happen and they don't always need a reason.

[Dallas]

I have to agree with you.. there are as many opinions as there are mechanics.
The only point I would like make is that Les Schaub is one of the reasons I started checking on what the guys in the shop were doing. I lost a set of duals off a new Trailmobile beam trailer with less than 400 miles on it, (It came from Trailmobile, Seattle.. I needed to put heavier tires on it for the loads I was hauling.), 1000 miles later the other side went south on me while I was headed east past Moses Lake. (You should have seen the splash and the carp fishermen run when they saw that one coming!).

I am very leery of anyone that works on my tires anymore. I've even seen thm go around and around with a 1" gun hammering for at least 30 seconds to a minute on each lug. Maybe my OD experience has something to do with it, After all, when you start working with permit loads, the whole ball game changes between DOT and Insurance.

[Hobie]

These are cheap and show at a glance a loosening nut.  I know, I know not very pretty on your Alcoas....

http://www.wheelsafeplus.com/wheelsafe.html

[belfert]

These are cheap and show at a glance a loosening nut.  I know, I know not very pretty on your Alcoas....

http://www.wheelsafeplus.com/wheelsafe.html

I believe I have seen these on coach buses.  I had no idea what they where the first few times I saw them, but I finally realized they must be to show loose lugnuts.  These are fairly common on cement mixers around here.

[Jeremy]

The yellow flag things are pretty much universal here, on trucks at least. Part of my brain is telling me that they're a legal requirement, although that may not be true.

I can't recall ever noticing them on a bus however. In fact an awful lot of modern coaches have wheel trims that cover the nuts, just like on a car. That cannot be clever, but I guess the industry has deemed it to be acceptable

Jeremy

[luvrbus]

OK guys what do you use to torque the wheels with ,500# is a lot of torque

[bobofthenorth]

I use a 4:1 multiplier and a 250# torque wrench.  I'd like to use a 650# torque wrench but I'm too cheap to buy one and I don't want to give up the weight and bay space to haul it around with me.

[junkman42]

I use a 10:1 proto torque multiplier and a beam type torque wrench.  The instructions for the multiplier say not to use snap type torque wrench.  I use a jack stand for the torque reaction arm on the multiplier.  It is easy to torque the wheels this way and uniform every time.  Hammering lug nuts with a air wrench with no torque stick is a invitation for a failure.  I am to old to use a cheater bar , the equipment I use is light and easy to handle.  Just My way!  John

[cody]

I try to learn something from each post but this one has me baffled, bob says that john reused studs that he had "clearly abused", others say that they can glance at a lugnut and tell if the torque is correct and we're supposed to do this at 2 hour increments, then there is the question of liability with one saying that a bus was allowed to leave with a wheel that was bound to fail, I'm sure there are many expierienced and qualified mechanics in here but how can this be determined by the few words that opened the post.  I can certainly see the merit in having the proper torque wrench and knowing how to use it but, come on, nobody can convince me that a visual inspection of a lugnut as you walk past it will tell you the torque, it may tell you if it's finger loose but thats all.  I'm the first to admit I know very little but this thread has me even more confused than usual lol.  It appears that there is a lot of reading information into the post that I can't find written and I'm asking how this is determined, I'm always trying to learn.

[John316]

NJT,

You completely misunderstood me. I never said anything about not torquing them. My point was simply, guys ram them on with 1" guns, and then they put a torque wrench on them, and don't have to do anything because they are already overtightened. My IR thundergun goes up to roughly 500lbs and I use that to run the nuts on, and torque wrench after that.

God bless,

John

[johns4104s]

Just pulled the e car over in Memphis on the way to Texas, on my return to Chicago and the bus I plan on getting all 10 changed.
I was just told by phone that number 1 discussion at the CVC rally was over tightening of Lug nuts. From what was agreed to by ALL was not to EVER let the tyre shop use the 1" impact to pull the 1000lb torque on them. But to torque them at between 400 and 500lbs.

I believe what Dallas was said about them starting out overstretched is correct. But I failed to keep a close enough eye on any changes that occurred.

Thanks Guys

John

[pvcces]

I've had my problems with 1" air wrenches set too high, as well. Most shops have tolerated going easy with the 1" wrenches, but one did not. This was a tire shop in Longview, WA, where the worker refused to pay any attention to what I wanted.

We carry the necessary bars and sockets to remove and tighten the nuts and studs IF they have not been abused.

One shop in Redding, CA, made a point of showing me that the air pressure was regulated and set to deliver less than 600 foot pounds.

Many seem to think that they can't hurt the studs and nuts by hammering on them.

For what it's worth.

Tom Caffrey

[NJT 5573]

Cody,

DOT does not require Haz Mat Drivers to look at tires and wheels every 2 hours to determine the amount of torque on the studs, only that they have some. The idea is to catch flat tires before they start smoking or throw pieces into traffic and to catch loose wheels before they leave the vehicle.

Each wheel is held on by 10 studs in most cases. If the hardware is comming loose, nuts will one at a time leave the vehicle and if you look you can see missing hardware. I think DOT feels that under all but the most extreme situations it takes more than 100 miles or 2 hours for all the hardware to fail and for the wheel to become airborne.

If drivers properly inspect their tires and visually inspect their hardware, highway safety can be greatly inhanced. I have caught my share, but I have also had them caught by enforcement at weigh stations. Thats expensive, Out of Service, Wait for Service Truck, Pay Fine....

We do break a few studs from time to time, but by far the greatest issue killing studs is cross threading and loss of threads. If you trash the threads on one lug, remove and replace the wheel, its impossible to not put a damaged lug on a good stud and a ruin the threads on a good lug buy putting it on a damaged stud. The next time you do that tire/wheel, it becomes a nightmare of stripped threads and the damage again likely doubles.

The next thing that happens is that the nuts don't want to come off with the tire gun. Thats when you hear the tire man beating the lug to death, only he's not trying to tighten it he's trying to get it off. Maybe he is polite and keeps his mouth shut, but he knows you are running on borrowed time.

When I do tires I take the time to look at each set of threads. Thats 40 sets of threads for each set of duals with stud piloted wheels. If I find even one set thats damaged, I replace the stud, or throw away the lug and or nut and replace them with new hardware. If I don't do it here then I will end up paying someone $100 an hour or more to do it somewhere down the road, and thats just not a good way to stay in business.

Overtightening doesn't damage threads, you stretch the stud and it breaks off clean. That is pretty damn rare even with quality 1 inch tire guns, but it does happen. I don't see how anyone is going to change world wide accepted tire practices at this point in time, the 1 inch tire gun is the industry standard and has stood the test of time for many years.

So guys, I have $1,000,000 Regular Liability and another $2,000,000 General Liability that follows me around both with the business and the Silver Eagle. Its there to protect my assets if and when the worst should ever happen. I guess if you are also insured up to/over the value of your assets, you can run your tires/wheels and or any other of your responsibilities any way that you want to, including loose if you feel thats the way to go. I have yet to have a piece of equiptment tied up at an Inspection Station for a tight wheel though and expect that I never will...

[kyle4501]

Impact wrenches damage threads.
Ever wonder why the instructions tell you not to use them on gear pullers & spring compressors?

If you think over tightening the nuts doesn't hurt anything, you don't understand what is happening at the thread level between the nut & stud.

A stud will stretch only so far before its length is permanently altered. When this happens, the thread pitch is different where it stretched.
This is why there is a torque specification. Ever wonder why, sometimes, a nut is snug all the way off? It is because the stud stretched & pulled some of the nut's threads with it causing the nut to have inconsistent pitch of the threads from one end to the other.

In designing a threaded connection, it is generally accepted that only 3 threads carry the load. This is due to this change in thread pitch when the stud stretches. Once the stud or nut yields, the joint strength is gone.


Stud piloted wheels are more sensitive to installation abuse than the newer hub piloted wheels.
On stud piloted wheels, over tightening the wheels crushes metal out from under the nut, reducing the strength of the wheel & reducing the capacity of the stud to accommodate thermal expansion.

Also, the studs are smaller on a stud piloted dual wheel setup . . . .


Garages & tire shops use impact wrenches for a reason - time = $$$  & most customers are looking only at the initial cost. Add to that the fact that replacing wheel studs is a billable line item. . . . just try to explain why you're charging an extra couple of hours just to hand tighten the wheels - most customers would badmouth you for padding the bill!
Look at how many don't pay for new valve stems. . . .


General practiced methods aren't always the best way to proceed.
Sad but true. . . . .