I have never seen this lug nut issue personally but have heard of it several times. Coincidentally it was always on a GM vehicle however I’m sure it’s happened to all make at one time or another.
Lug nuts falling off
- Thread starter wlk
- Start date
No everything is stock. Yes, I have seen where antiseize can cause it to be over torque as well. I am hoping this, under torque with the torque stick, is just the cause.
Yup. When I was trailering SeaDoo's I had constant problems with rusty lugs. I used grease, and eventually Corrosion X MaxWax with good results, they never came loose. I always torque with a Beam Torque Wrench. Old school style, where one can HOLD THE TORQUE for bolt stretch. Click type and torque sticks do not hold a torque and will always be insufficient for stretch applications.
Note: Head bolts/studs and rod bolts are stretch applications. As are most wheel studs. A few exceptions include the bolts used by Volkswagen from WWII, where the steel wheel was designed to compress instead of the bolt stretching.
Torque sticks on aluminum wheels. That's the problem.
When I was younger, I remember all too well NOT being able to get a lug-nut off because of rust or over-tightening.
Today, living in the rustbelt, I always add one drop of oil to the studs and finish with a torque wrench.
I wipe all the parts with a rag upon removal and reduce the torque by 10%.
I've never had a lugnut loosen, and they can be easily removed using a breaker-bar.
Today, living in the rustbelt, I always add one drop of oil to the studs and finish with a torque wrench.
I wipe all the parts with a rag upon removal and reduce the torque by 10%.
I've never had a lugnut loosen, and they can be easily removed using a breaker-bar.
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I use a regular click wrench, then go 15lbs over. Since stop using grease, haven't had a problem with anti-seize. Will monitor during OCI's. Stock rims on all vehicles. I did notice anti-seize gets sticky after awhile. I'll stay the course.
Most car wheels OEM advice torque of 100 to 110 ft lb. Torque sticks are not really that accurate. Most shops run over 90 PSI in fact I've never worked in a shop that didn't run at least 120 to 140. The torque sticks are supposed to be regulated at 90. Every shop I've worked at we hand torque it with a torque wrench. People that just zip them on with air guns or torque sticks are more likely to have problems with wheels falling off then properly hand torquing with a torque wrench. Over tightening can stretch the studs causing them to break.. Some of the hardest Wheels I've ever removed in my life had old anti-seize on it
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I just tried the Digital Torque Adaptor I bought 7 years ago.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009GLISI0/ref=twister_B0D5YFSP8N?_encoding=UTF8&th=1
It can be used with a breaker-bar or ratchet.
Kinda nice.
Put it on a TW and compare the accuracy of both.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009GLISI0/ref=twister_B0D5YFSP8N?_encoding=UTF8&th=1
It can be used with a breaker-bar or ratchet.
Kinda nice.
Put it on a TW and compare the accuracy of both.
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SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
That is a neat item I have never seen. I have never used anti-seize on wheel lugs. Lucky to not live in the "rust belt" where roads are salted and exposure to ice , snow etc.... that I can see could cause some issues.
My Toyota dealer after rotating my tires always made a note that I anti seized the center hub and lugs.I never had one come loose or failed to be able to loose with normal breaking bar.I also as previously posted,agree that the wire brush is a very important tool to use especially for us living in the rust belt.I may be weird,but I recheck,shop or myself.peace of mind for a important part of operating a vehicle.
SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
Two of my favorite tools I used every day on and off the job was a wire wheel and a sandblaster. Every nut and bolt I worked with , before going back in service either got blasted or wheeled until clean and new looking for two reasons. # 1) So I could get a real good look to see if replacement was called for #2 ) So that the next time they needed to be removed , they could be without a torch or giant breaker (back breaker too) bar like in so many cases.
Antiseize is a lubricant and would cause the studs to stretch or break off in an extreme case.
This almost never happens because a stud is stretched. A yielded stud still has elasticity and will still hold torque. You have to get into massive amounts of yield and actually necking the stud for there to be a net loss of clamping.
That's not quite accurate.
The hub bore in a proper wheel bolted joint carries no load whatsoever. It exists only to provide *location* of the wheel relative to the hub (concentricity). The actual load of wheel is carried by the frictional contact between wheel and hub. This frictional contact is a result of the clamping of wheel against the hub by the force of the lug nuts/bolts.
As a brief example, let's say you have a Toyota Truck pattern using 6 bolts that are M12s at 103Nm. Each of these fasteners will be supplying about 1100 pounds of clamping force, giving a total clamping force of about 7000 pounds PER WHEEL.
Greasing lug studs is indeed a terrible idea. But torque specs on wheel studs are inherently a problem. As I've posted here before, the factory torque spec is only valid for factory-fresh hardware. Your studs and nuts are no longer brand new. They have rust and some corrosion.
The factory torque spec often looks a lot like a regular bolt torque of the same thread spec, but they get there quite differently. Lugs have higher friction due to the zinc finish applied (typically chromate conversion). This would tend to require a HIGHER torque spec to produce the same amount of stretch.
But lugs target a lower nominal preload to that there's margin against damage and yielding the studs. The engineers have to account for the massive ± 30% variation in torque/tension that happens with just a straight torque spec (as opposed to torque plus angle or torque to yield).
All that to say: if you are re-assembling a well used lug nut or bolt, the factory torque spec is the bare minimum starting point. You'd be wise to go slightly beyond it to account for the corrosion of your used hardware and the fact that the factory torque is leaving a lot of margin in the bolted joint.
Too low a torque in a lug is much more dangerous than slightly too high. This is because an overtorqued lug has no cyclic loading-- the wheel and hub are rigidly fixed. So there's no fatigue cycles being generated and essentially no risk of fracture even if the lug is taken far into yield and nearly necked down.
Finally-- because of large amount of variation in the K-factor for wheel studs, using a torque wrench is false precision. Put the torque wrench away- it's almost certainly causing you to have less clampload than you should because you are following factory torque specs that do not apply to your no-longer-factory-fresh hardware.
I don't use this approach (home gamer, no blast cab in my 3rd garage stall). But I do find that chasing rusty threads with my Lang thread chaser set has been a habit I was long overdue to adopt. Especially my wrenching quite often involves old and rusty fasteners, chasing the threads and then wire brushing off has become my standard practice that I regret not adopting earlier.
I'm agreeing with the tool Cujet uses.I know for my situation what I have done.If halfway thru my rotation or going on a very long trip or vacation,I can recheck.Since I'm the only driver of my vehicle,I've built a little confidence into my maintenance plan.I also am a big believer in the thread restorer kit,living in the rust belt
So my GM shop manual for my Silverado advises to put a coating of grease on the inner lip of the hub ring (where the wheel meets the protrusion of the hub from the axle) of the wheels when rotating tires. This notion of relying on the friction between the mating surfaces of the wheel and the hub assembly is a good reason to NOT apply any anti-seize all over the face of the hub as some do in practice. It might also point to why in all of the service information GM advises to always remove the corrosion on the hub before installing wheels. It goes so far to mention in the owners manual, in the emergency jacking/flat replacement section, to "use a rag to try to remove as much surface rust as possible."
SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
I like those as well. It is a very fine/simple tool that I like a lot for most home garage/shops. Also readily available and not too expensive for its value where safety is of concern to all DIYers like many of us. I am of age and limited physical health to do much for myself these days so I am at the mercy of "shops" if my nephew is not available. He is a very fine young mechanic and I thank the Lord I have someone like him we can depend on to do things right the very first time. On the rare occasion I get forced to use some type of mechanical shop for any work, I watch them as closely as I can. I cringe when I see every tire facility use mechanics who grab the impact wrenches FIRST to reinstall lug nuts. Ugh....
Steel has a finite modulus. EVERY threaded steel fastener is a "stretch" application. Just like every substrate that is bolted is also being compressed. It's a fallacy to distinguish between the two when they are both ever-present in every bolted joint.Yup. When I was trailering SeaDoo's I had constant problems with rusty lugs. I used grease, and eventually Corrosion X MaxWax with good results, they never came loose. I always torque with a Beam Torque Wrench. Old school style, where one can HOLD THE TORQUE for bolt stretch. Click type and torque sticks do not hold a torque and will always be insufficient for stretch applications.
Note: Head bolts/studs and rod bolts are stretch applications. As are most wheel studs. A few exceptions include the bolts used by Volkswagen from WWII, where the steel wheel was designed to compress instead of the bolt stretching.
There's nothing magical about beam wrenches vs clickers. The hex isn't smart enough to know what tool is rotating it. Either you rotate the hex far enough to generate sufficient preload or you didn't. The tool that did that is irrelevant to the physics of the joint.
Been putting anti seize, grease, motor oil, gear oil on wheel studs since the 1990s never had anything come off. But I also used a torque wrench not those stupid torque sticks or German torque. Those torque sticks things are useless and dangerous.
If the wheel studs still look like they have some lube on them I don't add any. On my 12x1.5mm lug nuts I torque them to 70ft*lb drive 3 to 25 miles then torque them again to 80 imperial units.
Yes, and nobody dies of lung cancer the first time they smoke.
