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They actually called it 'Careless Torque Costs Lives'
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However, often they’re made of cheese/chocolate and round off or snap the locking key when you try to remove them. First thing I do with our vehicles is replace them with standard nuts. Even the aftermarket ones such as McGuard nuts are crap.
Well - mine are 12 years old and haven't rounded off yet. Must be that quality Italian engineering 😉
Re locking nuts - I broke the key for the one on the Passat, and once the garage had removed it I bought a cheap set from Halfords. Clearly pretty crude, but whatever. I then lost that key, so I went and bought another set being prepared to take it to a garage again to remove it. But before I did, I took a look at the key and thought it didn't look like it was a particularly sophisticated set of pattern variations. So I tried the new key on the old bolts and guess what?
Your wheel fell off?
This happened to my dad a few years back.....1 week before he had his front brake pads changed
So for 5 days he was driving to work 20miles each way....and the wheel came of at a roundabout on the a217.
When the AA came to the rescue...they found the nuts on the other front wheel was loose also.
Apparently there was no proof the garage that changed the front pads had not tightened the nuts properly....even tho it's pretty obvious
I had a wheel refurb and when I went to pick up the car I got about 2miles down the road and stopped. Only 3 bolts were in place and one was finger tight. I went back to the refurb place and the new guy who was putting wheels back on was sacked. Apparently not the first mistake he had made. That’s a very expensive mistake for a small wheel refurb company. It was really obvious that something was wrong with the car.
I had a wheel come loosen off once, was very obvious from the noise long before it was ready to fall off.
But then not everyone takes any notice of noises / things falling off / warning lights. Absolutely sick of going to the car and finding it broken in some way only to be told "Oh yeah I meant to tell you about that it was making a funny noise".
Could have been worse. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-43331639
Definitely worth checking every now and then
Or more urgently, listen to your car and bloody well stop if it's making a terrible noise.
My wife got hit with a wheel which had come off another car, our car needed new bonnet, wing, headlight, bumper etc etc - nearly wrote our car off. This was witnessed by police who just happened to be driving past. It turned out that the other vehicle was being road tested by a local garage, and the road test included a few miles on a motorway. Luckily the wheel didnt come off on the motorway, could have been really nasty. Police detained the driver of the other vehicle.
I’ve had a rear wheel come off an MG Midget – we were working on the brakes, (front only) and neither my or my friend recall even trying the rear wheels, but we must have done.
But it came off, literally within 200 yards of driving off. And thats a low powered leightweight vehicle.
The torque spec for midget wheelnuts is 35ftlb, that's about the same as the cassette on your bike (and a lot less than how tight you'd probably normally do a cassette to without a torque wrench!). More than that and they stretch and you ruin the studs or wheel.
They're a liability.
Had something similar on my T5 a few years back.
This has happened to me twice over the years on surf trips in mates' vans (T5 abd T6), N coast Scotland and W coast Irelant so long drives and v unlikely to be anything to do with theft.
As others have said it's very obvious even to passengers that something's wrong, if not exactly what. In fact the second time on the ireland trip I said it might be a wheel loose. Weird.
Std procedure for most tyre fitting monkeys is hold air gun on each bolt till it stops going round x 5.
Grab torque wrench, click, click, click, click, click done.
No idea what the torque figure is, except thays its more than 90ft/lb.
Could be 150 or 170 ft/lb but ypu will never know, or be able to undo the wheel nuts with the factory supplied cheese metal spanner. Which all appear to be designed to twist off the nut rather than undo it.
As for the op, reckon someone's had a go at stealing a wheel. Ime they rattle within a few miles, maybe ad much as 30, then fall off very duickly once the banging starts, like within 2 or 3 miles.
Out of interest OP, did you find the wheel nuts on/near the roadside? Had they snapped? Is it worth having a look by the overnight location in case there’s any nuts there? Only wondering, as if someone tried to nick the wheel I imagine they’d either be on the floor by it’s parking place, or very close to it. I see plenty of wheel nuts at the side of the road that have just hit the kerb. Maybe worth a look.
Could be 150 or 170 ft/lb but ypu will never know, or be able to undo the wheel nuts with the factory supplied cheese metal spanner.
I have a wheel brace which looks like someones started trying to tie knots in it. "More than 200 Nm" is about the size of it. We ended up using a 1/2" impact driver which was rated at something ridiculous like 1000Nm i think... That got it off quickly enough!
How was the car parked the night before? If the wheel which came off was the one best hidden from view. You can guarantee someone was trying to steal it and got disturbed. Most likely to order given the circumstances.
I've known people who've gotten punctures and just driven around until they find the same car. Then stolen one of the wheels. What's a tyre on your car £200-250? If they've driven the car on a flat tyre that's the rim gone as well. So you're looking at a bill of somewhere around £500-600.
I'm not convinced by the theivery. I've known people drive around with only three nuts on, and the only thing they noticed was a noise when they accelerated. But it's hard to blame a garage and the driver really should pay a basic bit of attention.