Almost lost a wheel on interstate today

I've had a heck of a day. Was going to visit family about 100 miles away up in the mountains and shortly after getting up to elevation started experiencing noticeable shaking in the steering. I thought perhaps a tire went flat and so I pull off to inspect and tires looked fine.

Since I was pretty close to my destination I hopped back on the interstate. Unfortunately the shaking by this time got far worse and my brakes didn't seem to work correctly (pedal went to floor and braking was compromised). I was quietly panicking (had my young son and puppy with me) as there was no pull offs as I was in a tight construction zone.

Luckily, I got about 5 miles down the road and pulled off the next safe place which was an exit. By this time I had hard metal to metal contact. To my shock and surprise I found that all my lug nuts on my passenger front wheel were gone and the studs were sheered off. The wheel was literally hanging on for dear life by some miracle.

I am pretty dumbfounded how this happened. I recently rotated my wheels and triple checked the torque settings. My setup is rather unique: my aggressive offset of these wheels required longer studs imported from Japan. Now I did lose one lug nut about a year ago and I'm not sure if this eventually led to me losing the rest.

So I'm back home now borrowing my brother's car until I figure out how to fix the truck. I'm not sure if I will need to replace my wheel or if I can reuse this one. I am truthfully a bit worried about continuing with this wheel set up.

Not really sure what the lesson is here but just thought I would share my experience if anything as a lesson to make sure you guys check your lugs often to be sure they are in spec.

Pics incoming...

 

.

 

I would say the wheel is toast. also looks like the remnant of that stud and the axle cover kept that wheel on... quite lucky, Glad you, son and puppy are all ok.

 

Wow, glad you and the fam weren’t hurt. What wheel/offset setup are you running?

 

Good news is you’re safe…

Probably would be best to replace the wheel bearing assembly that has a hub already installed… saves time there…

Inspect and replace the brake components as needed..

im going to assume the axle tip got damaged also… you may need to replace that also along with the dust cover.

what lug nuts where you using? Maybe the longer wheel stud that were installed could have been done incorrectly causing failure.

I would clean up the bad rim and use it as a spare and order a new one when you fix everything else

 

Mmmmm. Nope. You're not reusing the wheel. Who last touched that wheel and those lug nuts? You as you seem to note above?

And you're checking the other 15 lugs right away. I know you are. Curious what you find there.

 

Curious now, i have bad eyes. Were you using hub or lug centric lug nuts? acorns or non tapered, I mean?

 

My wheel set up is pretty unique, there are maybe 2 or 3 other guys on this forum that runs this set up. The wheels are Gramlight 57Trans-X and IIRC they are 0 offset. Had I known at the time how difficult it was going to be to mount them I would have went a different route. I had to get new wheel studs from Japan that were OEM spec but longer. Also had to BMC to clear the rub which still wasn't enough which led to an aftermarket bumper. When I bought the wheels the shop said I needed to use "tuner" lugs which I bought with the wheels. Project Kics Monolith TI/07 Lug Nuts - 14x1.5 if anyone wants to look them up.

I appreciate any feedback on getting this back on the road. I can only blame myself as I did the work along with my brother. IIRC We torqued these to 90-100 ft lbs. Also for the record I have run this set up for about a year and a half and maybe 20k miles or so with no issues. So again not sure what led up to this point.

 

These are the wheel studs I purchased based on a post on this forum:

https://www.blackhawkjapan.com/products/kyo-ei-sblc?_pos=2&_sid=819d88f88&_ss=r

SBLC: They are supposed to be same as OEM but longer per another forum member's findings.

Edit: these were recommended due to the Gram light aggressive offset.

 

Not sure exactly but they were called tuner lugs by the retailer. Here is what they look like:

 

Yeesh! That’s amazing the whee stayed on! Glad you are safe.

Years ago, I lost a wheel on my bronco - like, 40 mph across a canal bridge and BLAMMM! Corner of the truck drops and I watch my tire and whee go sailing down the road a 1/4 mile before rolling off the side and smacking a tree. Police showed up thinking I did something dumb or was under the influence; I told him the tire and I were having domestic problems and she walked out on me.

Anyways, I had replaced the brakes and studs on that wheel recently and supposed I hadn’t seated the lugs studs all the way, causing the lugs to work loose as they seated the studs. I told the officer as much, admitting to my part in the folley. He apparently knew his way around a toolbox, took one look at the lugs and said ‘nope, but that can happen.’ He asked where I was coming from (work) and where that was. As soon as I told him he let me know that kids were messing with cars in that neighborhood and prolly loosened the lugs as a joke. As evidence, only one stud had stripped - the rest looked almost new except for a few marks from when the wheel flew off.

Point is - perhaps the studs weren’t fully seated, or they lugs weren’t properly tightened. Or you just had some bad luck. Either way, check the lugs that are still attached.

 

Few thing I can think of is….

Dissimilar metals with the steel lug stud and ti metal lugs causing issues.

The studs were already stretched causing them to be fragile.

Were you running hub centric adapters to help center the wheel on the hub? Sometimes with the bigger wheels and tires setup they put too much of a load on the studs itself?

 

Here's what I'm wondering.. Not to second guess the vendor, I am sure they know what goes with what as far as lugs and wheels, but I've heard that acorns (tapered lugs) cannot be used on alloys and these look like acorns. Alloy lugs usually have a flat portion and washer, but some have the taper too, to accommodate the steel spare.

 

X2

 

Appreciate the feedback guys. I am no wheel expert either but I guess I do indeed need to find out if we used the correct style lug nuts. Also no sort of adapters were being used, wheels were mounted directly on the hub. Gonna tag the other guys with these wheels / studs to see if they can chime in @Jimes @cctxquicksand @Mrf1987

 

Man, that could've been much worse; glad you guys are ok...

I agree w/SP on this. Most aluminum set ups require the shank to be 'seated' in the wheel's lug holes and generally a flat 'washer like' part of the lug will sit against the outer surface of the wheel's 'lug holes'...

If you look at how these are designed and compare w/your first picture (use the bottom wheel hole for a perspective), the shank would sit inside the hole and the flat part of the lug would press the wheel against the hub as it's torqued down.



I'd imagine there may be different set ups, appearances of special lugs and such, so it's possible the lugs were proper for your set up... but definitely doesn't look right at face value.

The lug nut design you posted a pic of would appear to be proper for a steel wheel; similar to the following OE lugs designed for the OE Toyota steel wheels...

 

You're very lucky. What kept the wheel on?
You have to double check the torque on your wheels ,you can't assume they did it right but who does that? I don't but we should

 

I would agree that those wheels don’t look like they have the typical 60 degree conical seat you would see on a lot of aftermarket wheels that require 60 degree tapered lugs. Those strangely do look like they require the OEM style lug nuts with the flat seat and the washers.

 

Do you guys think a bad wheel bearing may have led to the wheel coming off? I bought the truck new and there was always a slight grinding/rotational scratching noise coming from the front suspension that could only be heard with the windows down. It really could have been a million different things causing the noise but perhaps there may have been some underlying issue that was always there

Its just seems odd to me that i lost one lug on the passenger side and now lost all of them. All the other wheels seem fine.

 

Agreed since it didn’t fail at the wheel bearing it failed due to snapped studs. It was probably a combination of the wrong lug nuts for the wheel and also, from searching those wheels might be 112mm bore and the tundra hub is 110mm. Without hubcentric rings that forces all of the weight to ride on the studs instead of the hub as intended.

 

It's a long story but I had my lugs come loose like that years ago.
I had paid off my 2005 and bought some OEM TOYOTA wheels on Craigslist to replace the OEM aluminum ones I had.
I always hated my stock wheels.

Had NTB put new tires on the new (to me) wheels.
They swapped the tires and wheels and I was on my way.

2 days later coming home from work, I felt a wobble and pulled over.
The right front wheel lugs were loose and one of the studs broke off.



As I removed the lugs and put them back on to retighten.
They only turned about 2 revolutions to tighten.
Come to find out, my old wheels used acorn lug nuts, the new wheels needed flat washer lug nuts.
You'd think the idiot who put the new wheels on would have taken note when the nuts only turned 2 revs to tight.
You'd also think that someone who mounts tires for a living would notice the newer wheel needed a flat washer lug nut.

So the story gets longer, I won't bore y'all with it.
Long story short, this is how my truck ended up after NTB repaired it..

It's post #11 in this thread if anyone is interested.

Tail gate key for 2006 - won't lock - fixed now | Toyota Tundra Forum (tundras.com)




My point is @Squatting Pigeon makes a good point about the lug nuts..
NEVER let NTB work on your vehicles, ever, for anything..

 

NEVER let NTB work on your vehicles, ever, for anything..[/QUOTE]

100% agree!

 

Never let anyone touching your truck. I had wife's new Sequoia at the dealer for warranty replacement, their technician replaced oil w/o even asking me ("it is free!") and he put 10.5 quarts of oil instead of 8.5. Apparently he didn't look at the jug and presumed it is 1 gallon jug, while it really was 5 quarts. As simple as an oil change can be, he screwed it up.

I do everything myself and barely have any screw ups. Even when I screw up, I know I did that and need to order parts and fix it. No keeping it secret from me, the customer.

 

Ill look into getting the rings. Do you guys think 90-100ft lbs of torque on the lugs would be correct for this set up? Its my understanding is based on the wheel stud size.

 

Interesting post a guy has lost his wheel twice. Probably unrealted to my issue however.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ToyotaTundra/comments/17eltbs/anyone_else_have_an_is
sue_with_lug_nutswheels/?rdt=54887

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFHco41G8pQ

Here is a close up of the wheels

 

Only partly based on stud size. Factory 2nd/2.5 gen spec is 97 ft-lbs for the OEM washered nuts for alloy wheels, and 154 ft-lbs for the tapered seat nuts on steel wheels, for example. I’m not saying I’d do 154 on your wheels if they do take a tapered nut, and I really can’t tell well enough from the photo if they do.

Tapered seats have much more friction on the contact surface to the wheel, thus it takes more torque to achieve the same tension on the stud. And it’s not torque that holds your wheels on, it’s tension, or stretch of the studs that keep ‘em tight.

Paint or powder coat on the hub flange of wheel acts as a lubricant and will fret out over time helping the wheel to come loose as well. You want those surfaces clean.