Snapped studs

[U4REEL]

Merry Christmas boys;D;D

Our Christmas Day started off very average, lost a wheel on the freeway on the boat trailer and was surprised to see all studs sheared completely off. Lucky a mate lived just round the corner so limped the boat there’s on 3 wheels.

gotta fix it tomorrow but thought I’d see if anyone has had this happen before.

brand new rotors,pads,rebuilt caliper and new bearings, second outing since fitting. The corner that sheared the studs had a bit off a sticky caliber that didn’t move around as freely as the others. So I’m thinking caliper locked up, but the pads and rotor are still like new? Maybe loose wheel nuts?

[Noelm]

Pretty common on boats, lots of reasons for it to happen, over tightened, cheap Chinese hubs plus a few others.

[ranmar850]

can be over-tightened studs, but also happens from them coming loose. I've personally had problems with alloy rims on trailers--I find that dunking alloy in salt water regularly with a nice, tight contact to black steel of a hub is a great way to have corrosion form between the two surfaces, leading to shuffle as the surfaces degrade and causing wheels to come loose regularly. Only wheel I've ever lost was on that trailer, most of the studs sheared. I had only done 650 k since they were re-installed. I know alloy rims are very popular--mine were re-purposed automotive ones, but I can't see why that would matter. Changed to steel rims, and problem went away. I'm buying a new boat in the new year, trailer ( 2.5T) is ordered, and it will most definitely NOT have alloy rims.

[tunaticer]

three possibilites.
Overtightened studs, you will see stretching of the threads near the break point.
Loose nuts, you will see damages to the stud from the wheel hammering it trying to break free.
Poor quality bolts, often found with cheap supply hubs, decent quality studs often have a stamping on the heads.

[ranmar850]

You may get a clue from looking at the rim that came loose--if the holes are flogged out, it will be from the nuts being loose.

[NAGG]

Don't feel bad about it .... I had it happen to me twice in the first 5 months of this year

My first thought was that I never tightened them after doing a service on the brakes & bearings ..... despite me having a procedure for doing this - only got 10 mins up the freeway too .
The second time ... was 4 months later - same wheel but after driving 700km ..... & I know the wheels nut were tightened (not overly) -

what I suspect is that the alloy rims holes were not perfectly matched for the studs & that over time there became same play . I turfed the pretty alloy 13" rims & went to 14 gal rims on the advice of a couple of trailer builders (they say that the simple nuts & gal rims seat better ) Mind you 40,000 km of towing this trailer and probably 100,000km of towing over the last 12 years had me pretty shocked.

Chris

[Spaniard_King]

Wrong nuts on ally wheels, common error unfortunately.

The hubs would have come with wheel nuts that suit Gal wheels, you need acorn nuts for alloy wheels