Sheared wheel bolts

danny_mac

danny_mac

danny_mac

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4 Jun 2007
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A mate of mine has just rung me up after having a spot of grief with his car.

He was driving round a loose bend doing 40 MPH, hit a small manhole and suddenly the steering wheel was vibrating and he was hearing a noise from the front right that he shouldnt of been hearing.

Pulls over and 3 of the wheel bolts have sheared off.

He has recently had a load of work done on the motor - an ST200, which included new brake discs. He had to have a spacer fitted to get the wheels on, which in turn meant the fella that carried out the work had to get new exended bolts.

My question is, generally speaking what would cause the 3 bolts to sheer off?
I have never heard of it before. Could it be that mechanic just bought cheap bolts?
 
sounds like the bolts were either not deep enough ie sheared at a protruding threaded section or poor quality-any chance of sorting a picture? Obviously having a spacer will weaken the assembly but to shear 3 off sounds extreme and dangerous.
 
Probably cheap studs made out of Monkey metal or the Dude never tightened them properly.
 
I think I'm with Malc. I've run spacers in the past with no problems and they have a habit of knocking the wheel bearings out, but not shearing studs.

Unless he's running like 1" spacers or more :eek:
 
Just popped round to see him, got a few pics

11102009029.jpg


http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/6363/11102009030.jpg[IMG]

[IMG]http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/9697/11102009031.jpg

And a wheel nut end he found down the road.

11102009032.jpg
 
I had 4 wheel nuts shear of my osf when doing 70 on the motorway. I had just had new tyres put on about 500 miles before. The heads of the nuts were still under the hub cap. The Rescue man said he'd never seen anything like it. I put it down to the garage over tightening the nuts and have never been back since. Ever since them I am now super paranoid about wheel nuts.
 
Hubcentric spacers are often used to change the offset of a wheel by manufacturers (OZ do this a lot) if the spacers are hubcentric, they shouldnt overly strain the wheel bolts, however, if you hit a pot hole hard, any wheel stud can break, and the rim!

If the spacers are not hubcentric (ie they are free to move on the hub and not locked in position) of that size, they will be death traps.

The spacer should be a tight fit in the wheel, and on the hub, so the load is spread on the wheel/hub centres not the studs.
 
LOL, chop shop style. Enough to collapse your wheel bearings without even moving. Enough unsprung weight to destroy handling. What car is it anyway, the brakes look tiny?
 
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