So im driving down the road and the jeep starts going all over the place like death wobble, and i look out the window and my tire is wobbling like crazy and lugnuts are flying off ...then the tire shoots off and goes flying into the woods about 100 feet down the road... meanwhile im going down the road at 40 with three tires, so i tap the brakes and she dives right, and goes off the road.. phew.. finally its over.. jeep is in the ditch, minus a tire.
Damage:
-put a flat spot on my brand new rotor
-wallowed out my wheel lug holes
- One of the lugs on my spacers is sheared right off.
Im not sure how this couldve happenned.. i just put on the WJ brakes conversion and torqued everything afterwards, i even double checked them on friday. everything was tight. .
Pics of spacer:
luckily it was just me and the dog in the jeep at the time, we are both fine just a little shell shocked. so could it be that the spacer failed which caused this chain of events to occur?
why else would the tire come off when i had just torqued all the bolts.. also it wallowed the heck out of my rim holes.. so they must have been tight. i am planning on calling the company to talk to someone.
it looks to me like the stud that broke was the only one that was tight and the others were loose
or came loose.
the lug holes in your rim will only wallow out if there is movement(ie loose nuts)
I don't see any failure of the spacer,only one broken stud and some wear from the loose wheel.
not sure about the cause.
yea was rethinking that, def not using the old ones.. talked to the wife, im getting new rims for fathers day! still planning on contacting spidertrax though, i want to hear what they say... as far as lug nuts, i used the ones they supplied in the kit, and the stock ones for the wheel.
as far as only 1 being tight.. yea maybe they loosened, but they were tight on friday.. torqued them myself.
i wish i could go back and watch it in slow motion.. i would love to know what really happenned to it.
my vote would be loose lugnuts. wallowed out holes would be a very good indication of that. maybe you did tightened them, maybe they wernt sitting flush, maybe someone loosened them up on you etc. If it were the wheel spacer, the wheel spacer would be bolted to the wheel off in the woods still :thumbsup:
My left rear wheel came off a few months ago doing about forty, scared the bejesus out of me. Still unsure of the cause, bu it did the same damage, wallowed out the wheel, smoothed out the rotor, tore the fender flair off and dented the rear panel.
Only thing we could come up with, was possibly some kids messing around the campground the night before, as I had spent the last two days wheeling.
Rest assured, i know check my lug nuts more often. interesting theory about possibly having the wrong lugnuts.
Just found the paperwork that came with my Spidertrax spacers... it say 85-110 ft/lbs tightened "in a criss-cross pattern" for the spacer nuts and the lognuts... I've always done my lugnuts @ 100 ft/lbs...
After seeing this tread, I just went and double checked all of mine...perfect as always...
^^^ very good point 1cleantj, i am thinking you didnt tighten it enough. i used some form of spacers on my old 300zx and on my way to work one day, BAM, wheel pops off, luckily my fender fell on it and it didnt fly off to the left 100 feet, but i did skid off to the side of the highwaay... now, keep in mind it happened a few days after i mounted the wheel, so the lugs had time to loosen up... now, on the jeep, we ride larger tires, causing more stress on the lugs, so it happens in less time... but (in my case) i hear a lot more noise and feel a lot more vibration and bumpiness in my yj than the 300zx, so sometimes i cannot tell the difference between one symptom and another. next time try to be more aware of noises and vibrations your jeep keeps sending u, your just lucky your alright... stay away from spacers. i dont trust em and ill never play with them again...
So im driving down the road and the jeep starts going all over the place like death wobble, and i look out the window and my tire is wobbling like crazy and lugnuts are flying off ...then the tire shoots off and goes flying into the woods about 100 feet down the road... meanwhile im going down the road at 40 with three tires
haha yes all i wanted to do was slow down at that point. as soon as i saw the tire start to wobble i was braking.. then as soon as the tire came off the brakes really started to work and with just one front tire braking, it pulled to the right fairly hard.
What happen to the other lug nuts? The threads on the remaining lug bolts don't look too bad. Did the threads on the other lug nuts strip out?
I had the same thing happen on a old Chevy truck years ago. I think I had tightened the lug nuts too much on it and stripped the threads out of the lug nuts.
they were all within 100-110 Footpounds. with locktight .
how bout my disk brake? it has a nice flat spot now, but its not really that big, where the pad contacts is still a 16th or so away. would it be unbalanced? can i just run it?
yea thats the thing, i have never had a problem with them and have always checked them religiously . i had a tire fall off my buddy GTO when he was taking a turn and he went into a tree. sadly he didnt make it. but it taught me a good lesson.
Ok, I just read this again and something isn't real clear, unless I just missed it...
Where was the spacer when you ended in the ditch? Connected to the back of the detached Rim, or still mounted on the Axle/Rotor/Unitbearing still?
I'd like to see additional pics that would tell a little but more of the story (other than just "The Spacer Failed"...)
- The (5) Spacer Lugnuts that hold the Spacer to the rotor face
- The (5) Main Wheel lugnuts (if you found em)
- The studs of unit bearing on the axle
If I were a betting man...some # of your main lugnuts came loose somehow... I don't see this as a Spidertrax Spacer failure at all...yes, the lug broke, but I'd also bet that you loosen 3 or 4 lug nuts on any unit bearing without a spacer, with one still tight enough to grip, the stud would snap off just like this one did in a similar situation.
I've heard stories of people having their Lugnuts messed with, loosened, or even stolen... you said you were certain they were tight... was your vehicle parked outside anywhere unattended when someone could have screwed with it?
I'll be interested what Spidertrax tells you when you call, but wallowed holes on the wheel, missing lugnuts, wheel coming off, I think they will come to the same conclusion.
**EDIT** I may sound like I'm defending Wheel Spacers, and in a way I am... no they are not optimal, but I see threads like this every now and then, and I've yet to see one that I would consider "Wheel Spacer Failure"... most of them I've seen are like this, where the same thing likely would have occurred without a spacer. I DO currently run them, have for years with Zero issues or concerns. YES I do plan on eventually getting rims with proper Backspacing so I won't need the spacers, but not because of concern about the spacers. I think they wrongfully get a bad name as dangerous...show me one failure of a Spidertrax that was a proven Spidertrax failure.
You can see where the wheel was loose rubbing around on the spacer. I have never liked wheel spacers.
Probibly never will.
Why call the company that made them? they will tell you the bolts loosened. and those most likely are one of the best quality spacers on the market.
Many many people never have problems with spacers. If that spacer indexing ring no longer fits the wheel properly after this It should NOT be used.
you know what, i bet i tightened them too tight which stripped the inside of the lugnuts. also the threads on the studs on the wheel spacers are still pretty good, its the inside of the lugnuts that stripped. the threads were still attached to the wheelspacer studs. i have a torque wrench and tightened them all to 110 FT/lbs , i bet it was too muich for the stock lug nuts to handle?
Actually, tightening them too tight normally ends up with a broken bolt, not a stripped lug nut: even the stock nuts ought to handle that kind of torque, and one of the points of the torque rating is to not exceed the tensile strength of the bolt: if you exceed that, you stretch it past the point where the metal will return to it's normal "condition": it actually changes it's internal structure and it breaks. Stripped nuts, unless they're exceedingly cheap steel (as in pig iron from China) usually means abused nuts.. tightening them down through a blockage, galling threads, etc... I guess you could actually damage the WHEEL overtightening, deforming the taper "socket"..
usually i am surgical with my torque wrench. it was because i didnt trust the wheel spacer that i torqued the tire on so tight. and no, i dont have any lock nuts. the weird thing was the only wheel lug hole that wasnt wallowed was the one where the stud sheared right off. if that stud broke after the tire was woobling wouldnt there be some wallowed marks.
Just out of curiosity, have you had that wrench calibrated recently?
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