That happened with my quad. Had the front wheels off and only finger tightened them - got distracted and forgot until the LH one parted at full noise on a forestry track. As i previously stated, the RH nuts were still finger tight. But I had no idea the wheel was loose until moments before it was too late.
xacoon,
Mar 30, 6:51am
what side of the trailer! I know 70s f100 wheel nuts are notorious for loosening off on the left hand side, have had it happen several times, only the left hand side.
xacoon,
Mar 30, 6:53am
sorry I beg to differ, its a poor excuse for a pun.
lost rear left on my xb ute, never noticed wobble, just a slight perplexing clunk now and again. pulled into the driveway, as I stopped rolling and pulled the handbrake on, wheel tipped over. drum sitting in the wheel though so easy enough to get the jack underneath haha. alloy rims that had the nuts go right through the rim though, im wondering if thats why there was no wobble! factory rims with tapered nuts would have a bit more slack maybe!
joanie04,
Mar 30, 12:10pm
The rear wheel of our morris minor came off and passed us going down the road years ago when I was a kid.We'd just come back from Waihi through the Karangahake gorge and had stopped down our country road to talk to the neighbour.As we took off dad could see in the rear vision mirror the neighbour and his daughter pointing, next thing the wheel nearly beat us home.Made a nice hole in the tarseal and we wouldn't have been doing much more the 30kph.I think we had an axle problem (don't quote me) I'll have to ask Dad.
richard112,
Mar 30, 3:36pm
Large trucks have L/H thread on L/H side. Wheels coming off must be pretty common. There's even a song about it. "You picked a fine time to leave me - loose wheel"
justworking,
Mar 31, 1:40am
Can't beat Kenny Rodgers!
gsimpson,
Oct 4, 12:57am
If the wheel is still on the car then you still have a contact point! Your last sentence proves my explanation. The technical reason if you want to look it up is "mechanical precession". A short definition. Precession is the process of a round part in a round hole rotating with respect to that hole because of clearance between them and a radial force on the part that changes direction. The direction of rotation of the inner part is opposite to the direction of rotation of the radial force. Fretting between the part and the hole is often a result of this motion. "In machinery, fretting is the micro-motion of tightly fitting parts that superficially appear immobile with respect to each other."
BTW the tapered seat on wheel nuts is designed to reduce this effect which is why most cars have RH threads on all nuts. I imagine there were many snapped off studs on cars using LH threads.
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