MySwag.org The Off-road Camper Trailer Forum
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Baz on December 27, 2013, 03:11:02 PM
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Hi All,
decided to drive to Coffin bay from Adelaid on christmas day (bored). Got half way there doing about 100k and the wheeel decided it did not loke the car any more.
All ok and back home now.
I have an in car video of this but cannot post.
Baz
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Some more pics.
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Wow main thing is you and others on the road weren't injured. Very lucky mate
Swannie
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We'll done to pull up safely, how far did the wheel assembly go?
I lost one once and it went for 300 metres. Tracked it down via the swathe of broken shrubbery and bounce marks off trees!
:cheers:
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Standard for GU's with factory alloys to lose them... specially if you've changed one in the recent weeks.
DDR lost one hours after changing one in Murray Sunset. - hes lost 3 (all on my trips :()now I think.. has got into the habit of checking them more than regularly..
Solution - buy Steely's
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The owner's manual says you need to use a torque wrench.
My 2006 GU was recalled to fit plastic indicators to show if nuts were coming lose. I sold it before I got around to getting this done.
I don't think I've ever seen a Patrol with these indicators fitted.
Nissan must have sorted the problem because my 2011 GU doesn't have/need them.
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Very lucky, Baz. The marks on the road show how nasty it could have been.
Good effort getting it pulled up with everyone OK, and minimal damage.
Were you carrying spare studs and nuts?
There are just too many cases like this...... >:(
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Glad it ended safely Baz.
Scares the sh!t out of you. We had it happen to our GU a couple of years ago. Surprisingly received the Nissan recall not long after for the wheel nut covers.
:cheers:
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Hi All,
The wheels were last rotated about 3000k ago, so things should have happened well before now.
Basically, once the wheel let go we were along for the ride, just had to make sure it stayed upright. Very Very lucky no on comming vehicles.
Found the wheel about 500m along in the bush.
I had 4 spare studs (2 front, 2 rear), the remainder were from from the two rear wheel carrier assemblys. I am now changing these today for the propper studs.
I had the nissan plastic coverings on the wheel nuts.
I also have 3 of the sheared studs, which i picked up searching for the wheel. So there must have been three on the car when it let go?
But yes scared the bejeeeeesus out of us. But once we were stopped time to calm down and assess.
Lots of people stopped to check if we were ok/needed help. Thanks to all of them.
Baz
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Good to hear no one was hurt.
We too had a similar incident on our hilux recently- lucky for us we realised before it departed the vehicle, and that it happened as we pulled into a town where we could get parts. Sheared 4 studs, leaving 2 in charge of holding the wheel on.
Kris.
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Again excellent to hear it wasn't as such a bad ending as it could have been and no one was hurt.
My daily drive and my tug is a mine outfitted vehicle so I have mandatory wheel nut indicators fitted, while it's considered overkill for a non work vehicle I'm happy to walk around and look at each set before I get in the car each morning. And they are like 60cents each for some piece of mind. There are heaps of different ones to fit any type of nut and wheel combination.
The photo is of my old ute, facing the center like these are is not the easiest to detect a change in one. They are better facing tail to tail, but the Toyota service guys that rotate the wheels don't seem to be able to get the gist of them and usually break at least 30% of them using their pliers on the tails to reef them off, now I take them all off before I take the vehicle for a service.
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Wow main thing is you and others on the road weren't injured. Very lucky mate
Swannie
X2 on above....
Have several friends Patrols that have done the same thing, not all had recent tyre changes either, one was many months after anyone had been near the tyres. Hope Santa bought you some new undies after that ride.
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Man that was very lucky. I bet a change of undies was required along with the wheel nuts ;D
A mate had a wheel from his campertrailer overtake him as he was going over the Mooney Mooney bridge on the F3 a coue if years ago. The wheel ended bouncing over the safety fence into the southbound lanes and then over the bridge. They were very lucky.
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Geez you were lucky Bazz. The same thing happened to a friend of mine on a similar road an and at the same speed. Fortunately they stayed the right way up and were ok.
Did the sheared off studs that you found still have the nuts on them and were the nuts in their original tightened position? Nuts can certainly come loose if they are not tightened correctly but overloaded studs can also break. My mate had a staggering amount of weight on the back of his, including a heavy camper trailer, and your car looks like it has its fair share of it.
He now uses a tension wrench but I would not be surprised if it happens again. The studs are not indestructible.
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So what is the actual problem with the Nissan alloys? Do the nuts work loose or do the studs snap?
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On ours it was the nut not being centred properly on the alloy. There is an inner part on the wheel and if the nut is not centred it moves until it does and then eventually sheers the studs off. :'(
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Not an unknown issue on Trols unfortunately, although in over 300,000 km in three different Trols, I didn't experience it first hand.
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l know what you got for Xmas , Good Luck so it seems :cheers:
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Sorry to hear about your misfortune, well done keeping it shiny side up.
Given the regular occurrence of this maybe we should just say 'It's a Patrol thing' :cheers:
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Given the regular occurrence of this maybe we should just say 'It's a Patrol thing' :cheers:
It's not just Patrols, but they do feature far too prominently....... >:(
Steel wheels are good.
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Kenny Rodgers did a song about this i think.....
"You picked a fine time to leave me loose wheel"....
I'll bet you don't even try to wash the undies out.... they'll be a throw away item now.
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No good mate. Glad you and the family are all safe. Lucky there was no oncoming car or worse truck by the looks of it.
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Jeeeez how lucky, a timely reminder for GU owners with alloys.
BD
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Jeeeez how lucky, a timely reminder for GU owners with alloys to call me and I'll get you some steelies at the right price.
Fixed... :D
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also lucky you didn't start a fire with all that dry grass..
would have just needed a small spark.. or even just ya hot exhaust.
take care.
what would ahve been the cause of the lost wheel? broken studs, loose wheel nuts,
and would they have broken cos of over tighten the nuts?
Peter,
iPad with IOS 7.0.3 using Tapatalk HD
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what would ahve been the cause of the lost wheel? broken studs, loose wheel nuts,
and would they have broken cos of over tighten the nuts?
That is a good question Peter and I hope Bazz is able to find out. It is just not logical to say it is a "Nissan thing". If the car had a design fault then Nisan would have fixed it years ago and recalled all affected models. No manufacturer could afford to ignore a problem that caused wheels to fall off.
I spent 19 years working in the motor industry in my younger days starting at a time when 4wds were a rare sight on the roads. I replaced plenty of broken wheel studs all through those years. I think it comes down to two things: over tightening and over loading. Over tightening has always been with us but excessive weight in the pre 4wd days was not all that common. It is a major issue today with 4wds being the main offenders. When you over load the rear end, no amount of heavier springs, shocks or air bags are going to strengthen the standard wheel studs or the axle housing for that matter. I have seen a few of those either cracked or broken in half.
I would like to see statistics that compare wheel losses between cars towing with weight distributing hitches and those without them. These hitches lift weight off the rear wheels and transfer it to the front wheels. The owner's handbook in my Hilux 4X4 says I must use one if I put more than 90 kg on the tow ball but if I did, and towed a camper through erosion ditches or creeks, the thing would be bent at such an angle that it would go close to ripping the tow bar off.
For this reason you rarely see them on campers but many of them have huge ball weights that are way over the limit for my car and I suspect many other makes. When you combine that with a couple of spare wheels hanging off the back of the car, plus a loaded roof rack and whatever is inside the back of the car, you have a hell of a lot of force banging down onto those little wheel studs. On top of that you have the forces generated when the car runs over cattle grids and corrugations. They increase by the square of the speed of the car.
I would not be surprised if this was the primary reason why many 4wds break wheel studs with over tightening a reason as well but running a distant second.
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If the car had a design fault then Nisan would have fixed it years ago and recalled all affected models. No manufacturer could afford to ignore a problem that caused wheels to fall off.
Nissan have a recall for the fault whereby they supply tension indicators as previously posted.
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Nissan have a recall for the fault whereby they supply tension indicators as previously posted.
Yep. Fixed...... ::)
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I have heard for a while now that over tightening causes them to break..
I had a go at my mate earlier this year when I was working on his rig. It was all I could do to undo his nuts, even with the breaker bar.. they were way too tight.
Peter,
iPad with IOS 7.0.3 using Tapatalk HD
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It is just not logical to say it is a "Nissan thing".
Sorry Metters but it is a Nissan thing. Just like cracking on the larger of the two barn doors is not an isolated incident. Both somehow don't seem to warrant an official recall. But both very definitely plague many a nissan owner.
Nissan's approach to these two issues alone, are why I'll NEVER own another.
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Nissan have a recall for the fault whereby they supply tension indicators as previously posted.
Do these indicators still show the nuts working loose even after they have been tightened to the correct tension with a tension wrench that is accurate? If they no longer come loose then there was no problem in the first place, just a lot of people not tightening them correctly.
Cracks have occured in many cars over the years with some being design faults and others caused by extreme use. II have a book that contains an interview with one of the GM engineers who was on the design team for the 48 215 model Holden in 1948. He said they were engineered to last for 35000 miles or around 56000 ks. That was in normal family use. The Holdens in the famous Redex trials of 1953, '54 and '55 were plagued with body and subframe cracks. They were not overloaded but were pushed to the limit on unsealed roads. It did not happen in normal street use so there was no need to redesign the car.
Some EH Holdens at Bathurst in October 1963 tore the centres out of their wheels. The race was for standard cars over 500 miles on a good public road yet sustained high speed was too much for the wheels. Once again ther were no problems on the street.
I have seen cracked rear doors on Landcruisers while working for three Toyota dealers. They all had oversize and heavier aftermarket wheels mounted on them so they were outside their design limits.
We had a lot of trouble with French alloy wheels buckling on new 505 Peugeots. It was not a design fault because it did not happen in Europe. The issue was they did not suit Australian conditions so they were all replaced without question with a locally made wheel. That was a genuine fault and the manufacturer fixed it immediately.
There is always a lot more than meets the eye in many of these cases. I have had enough to do with dealers, warranty problems, State distributors and manufacturers to know that if there is a problem that must be fixed then they will fix it. If they don't then the litigation lawyers will soon sort them out.
There is a few link below on wheel problems. Over or under tightening are major causes of failures as is overloading and that is one area where 4wd are right up at the top of the list.
Note the warning about lubricating studs in some of them. Never do it unless the manufacturer says so and I have yet to find one that recommends it.
http://www.normarkindustries.com/CausesEffects.htm (http://www.normarkindustries.com/CausesEffects.htm)
http://www.crashforensics.com/wheelandhubfailures.cfm (http://www.crashforensics.com/wheelandhubfailures.cfm)
http://www.boltscience.com/pages/failure4.htm (http://www.boltscience.com/pages/failure4.htm)
http://www.caravanandmotorhomebooks.com/articles/why_wheels_fall_off.html (http://www.caravanandmotorhomebooks.com/articles/why_wheels_fall_off.html)
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I carry a torque wrench in the GU for this exact reason, after anyone removes a wheel I check them and then again after a bit of driving. It only takes 5 minutes with the wrench to make sure all the nuts are up tight.
Like all cars they have their problems, for the Patrol its wheel nuts, cracked barn doors, bubbly dashes and the 3.0l grenade.
GG