This is the strangest thing... I have a 98 4x4 off road with the 16" chrome steel wheels.

I get new tires at 183,000, and since then I've had 4 wheel covers fall off of 3 different wheels! What the heck?!?!

I've rotated tires the entire time, but why now are they falling off???

It's not like I see Rangers and Explorers on the road with missing hub caps, so it's not happenning to a lot of people.

Anyone experience this? The only thing I can think is that the steel wheel behind the chrome cover is rusting and it's making the cap pop off?!?!

Thanks.

 

If you haul butt around corners, it can make a wheel flex enough to make flimsy caps fall off, but maybe they weren't installed correctly?

 

It's happened with 2 of my hubcaps and I was never able to find them. I have those small center hubcaps that are just big enough to cover the lugnuts. I went on ebay and picked up a couple more for pretty cheap. I'll see how long these ones last before I hit another bump or something.

 

If the metal clips on the inside of the hupcap are bent wrong or missing then they won't hold on to the wheel or lug nut tight enough and will come off easy. Some of them only have three sets of clips to fit over the lugnuts, so they all need to be there. If the cap clips hold on to the lugnuts, make sure the tire store didn't change some of the lugnuts to regular ones. The stock lugnuts have a flange for the hub cap to grip when it's put on. Regular lugnuts don't have the flange.