Wheel Nuts

[orcrist_1986]

Had a small incident at the weekend and wondered if anyone else had something similar happen

so here goes,

Saturday afternoon stuck in a small traffic jam, when i heard a small knocking noise from the front nearside wheel.

immediately i think wheel bearing or cv joint, but unlikely on an 05 plate.

so i pulled up outside my girlfriends house, get down under the car, check for movement in the cv joint, nothing, check the wheel, which felt a bit loose.

so i get the jack and the wheel brace out, go to loosen the nuts before lifting the car, and one of them is loose.

now i've only had the wheels of once, but i put them back on with a torque wrench to the standard that toyota have stated in their service manual.

so now i have the problem of the nuts working themselves loose, and was wondering if anyone else had the same problem?

Im going to remedy this by replaceing the toyota wheel nuts with buddyclub lightweight wheel nuts.

[MarcTS]

Well I had my front wheel come off when I was on the M40, and that was due to loose wheel nuts, but no idea if that was a defect or some little so and so loosening the ones which weren't locking nuts. That ended up doing £4.5k worth of damage :(

[orcrist_1986]

so maybe this is a common fault with the wheel nuts then?

I think i have solved it for a while now, by over torqueing the wheels by about 5nm, so hopefully they'll hold a bit better.

[MarcTS]

I'm not sure, I would constitute a common fault here. Seem more likely to be kids. Just be careful when over tightening the wheel nuts as this could lead to them shattering. The best thing to do (which I still haven't done) is to replace all the bolts with locking ones and not just 1 per wheel like you have as standard, that way it is harder for a kid to casually loosen the bolts on your car.

[cfc1]

It's not a comon fault, infact I would go as far to say it isn't a fault at all. IF there was a fault with anything when you were at your wheel I would say it was your torque wrench, how accurate does it say it is from new and how old/how many times have you used it since, they don't last forever, we change ours at work every 4 months, granted they get used a lot though. You say you tightened them to Toyota specifications.. can you tell me what that is?

In all honesty.. on an 05 car I would say that you never tightened them up enough or some scroat has been trying to steel your wheels (was the locking nut loose too?), they don't work loose for no reason, car manufacturers have been designing these basic items for at least a couple of years now, so I think any faults would have been ironed out by now ;)

[farhanali89]

Used to happen alot on my old t3 but i changed my wheel nuts on my t-sport to black annodised ones which havent given me a problem so far. Could be wear on the studs or damagedthreads on the actual nut. Change it but be wary of it for a while

[Twincam.GTi]

As a side note Wheel studs on post 2002+ model Corollas have been known to crack/snap/break - are just made from bad quality metal!

This 'problem' is NOT confined to Toyota, a lot of cars built in last 5 years seem to be suffering this inconveniance. Two of the most common culprits apear to be Subaru Impreza and Chysler Cruiser.

[orcrist_1986]

I only came on to as a simple question, not get blame or sarcasm.

Back to the OP, I got the information from my local Mr T as to what they should be tightened to, but as I misplaced the paper, I'm not to sure what the exact figure was, but it was around 80nm, but like I said, I don't know the exact figure.

Going back to my torque wrench, It's a few years old, but has just been refurbed, so I know its not that that is causing the problem.

And it can't be ch*vs undoing the wheel nuts as my car is stored in a garage overnight, unless I'm at my girlfriends where I park in her driveway round the back of the house.

So, its looking very likely that they have undone themselves.

[4afte]

best job is to replace them with a decent set, my wheel nuts gave out when i was on the M3 coming back from autotuner, this was the damage:

so i replaced the regular nuts with a set of alluminium cold forged set (dead light!)

i had no problem with my wheel nuts for 2 years past but since dropping the 3S-GTE i thought the extra weight over the front and vicious torque increase may not help.

[orcrist_1986]

Yeh, I have been looking at getting a full set of buddy club wheel nuts.

Buddy Club

they are at the very bottom of the page, they are made from aircraft grade aluminium, so should be quite strong, and light hopefully.

only problem is the price, they are about 21.50 per wheel, so altogether about £86, but hopefully should look a good match to my paintwork as well

[Twincam.GTi]

orcrist_1986 Posted Today, 10:10 AM

I only came on to as a simple question, not get blame or sarcasm.

Well said!

Which is WHY I mentioned about fatigue of studs - it appears there IS a problem .

:)

[farhanali89]

Yep my wheel studs kept braking on my old corolla, i have 4 spare ones in my glovebox that i bought from toyota, So if any ever do break i know i have some straight away.