The Stovebolt Site Forums The Parking Lot Big Bolts Check your lugs!

I had been hearing a squeak/rattle in my '46 6400 for a few weeks. It sounded like something up front, but I couldn't find the source. Yesterday I was walking by the truck and noticed a couple of lug nuts missing on the right rear wheels. Upon closer inspection, the studs were also missing. I jacked up the truck and started to take off the tires to investigate. They were already loose, the studs all snapped, and the inside wheel has lug holes over an inch long! At first I was shocked, then very grateful that I didn't lose the wheels on the road.

As it stands, I need to find new studs to put in. Fortunately I have a spare wheel with a new tire on it. This could have been a catastrophe.

I had never had a reason to have these tires off the truck before and didn't ever check the nuts. From now on, checking lugs will be part of regular maintenance.

Glad nothing worse happened, Ed! Checking the lugs for missing/cracked nuts or studs, shiny threads or rust trails is great advice and part of a proper pre-trip inspection

(Along with a whole bunch of other things that not all of us do as diligently as we should ... )

John

When I was 16 before my first trip driving all by myself on the interstate I had loaded all my hit and miss engines on the back of a 1965 flat bed F350.
Filling it up at the gas station I heard a squeek as I pulled into the pump, just figured it was the rack/sides on the bed.

90 miles up the highway it felt like I got two flat tires at once on the left rear! I somehow got it pulled over real quick to find 5 of the 6 lug nuts and studs gone and one loose one remaining. The wheels were stud centered with a significant gap between hub and wheel center bore. So they staid sort of attached by that last stud and flopped around on the hub something terrible.

That's a trip I'll never forget.

Beware of rusty streaks coming from the lug nuts in a pinwheel pattern. For some reason that's usually an indicator of a loose nut. When I was running the shop for a small trucking company we watched that pretty closely.
Jerry

Thanks for the word of warning Ed, and I am glad nothing real bad happened. As part of my standard pre-trip inspection, I have always looked for telltale paint chip marks indicating movement on all of my wheel lugs where they touch the rim. They have never changed and I was considering to quit looking...I think you changed my mind.

great reminder, thanks! Glad nothing too bad happened!

Lucky nothing real exciting happen!! What a close call. You may want to check and see if your wheels are piloted on the hubs correctly. The later wheels starting in 54 fit but have a .500" larger pilot diameter on the wheel. I had two on the front of mine like that and didn't notice it until I was changing wheels around. I made rings and pressed in the wheels when I moved those wheels to the rear. See Tech. Tips

Thanks for the tip. The wheels were snug on the hub, just loose lug nuts.

When I was a kid, I remember riding into town with my Grandmother, who had been tasked with taking one of our F700's to the tire shop for a flat repair. It was harvest time and the combine would be waiting with this truck out of the rotation. I was too young at the time to remember all the details of what actually was determined to have happened at the shop. I do remember riding along at highway speed a few miles outside of town when we were suddenly passed in the left lane by a wheel and tire with no vehicle attached to it. It changed lanes into our lane just in front of our truck, held the lane for a few seconds and then moved over into the ditch and bounced around as we passed it. Needless to say we were soon stopped in the ditch too, as it was our outer drivers side rear wheel. It could have been really bad news for us, or anyone around us to be hit by the wheel, or if the other one had made it off of the hub.