Do you openly admit that you knew that?

Ouch.

Cody

 

Yeah I knew it, not sure why but I did.

 

Every shop should have torque sticks for their impact guns, yet surprisingly a lot of them don't. We torque every wheel we put on a car.

 

From the way the rim looks it was loose, aluminum rims need to be re-torqued if you have them off.

Where in Ohio are you located? NW Ohio here around Findlay here...

 

Central Ohio, Pickerington, close to Columbus.

 

The picture of the wheel suggests that the wheel was loose, at least for a little while.
The wear on the face of the wheel where the lug nuts contact, and, the lug threads being embosed into the wheel lug holes (all the way around), seem to indicate all 8 studs intact with loose nuts.
Don't see how over torqueing could cause this.

 

So do you guys think the hub had anything to do with this??? How can you tell if the hub is bad????

 

Yeah my guess would be that someone with an impact wrench honked the lugs down good and tight. Unfortunately, if they don't have adjustable torque, they may have pushed the lugs past their yield point. They would look OK but would be much weaker than a normal lug. If you have ever turned a lug or bolt real hard and felt it suddenly get a little looser, that is where you exceeded the yield point. The bolt or lug will still look almost normal but it will be much weaker. Usually you will see a little necking or narrowing of the lug at the point where the metal yielded.

I recall from a vibration and stress training class I took, that the military had similar problems with the helicopter hubs. Even though there are lots of lugs on both the truck and chopper, sometimes only two lugs at a time are taking all the stress meant for all 8 or whatever. This pops those two lugs and then transfers the strain to the next two and so on. Takes awhile but eventually all the lugs pop. Maybe this is what happened to you. Things would feel fine until the last lugs popped.

I have had the opposite problem. I did not torque down the lugs on my 67 Dodge and was tootling around the neighborhood. The car made some noise and rumbled a bit, but I didn't know much about cars then. One wheel fell off as I turned a corner, thankfully at slow speed.

Now I always use a lug wrench and torque to spec with clean lugs. I use antisieze even though there are arguments pro and con.

Good to see you are fine and it doesn't sound like the truck is too bad off.

Jim Henderson

 

Thanks Jim. I just learned a new term. Yield Point/Yield Strength.