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Lug nuts coming loose, sheered off studs

4K views 10 replies 9 participants last post by  Shark_911 
#1 ·
While my son was on a 7 hour drive, and about halfway to his destination, he started to feel vibrations. He stopped and inspected the tires, and one of them had two studs sheered off. The other three lug nuts were hand loose. It was a Sunday night, so he ended up stopping where he was and paying for a hotel, and getting a local mechanic to fix it the next day for over $300.

The last time anyone touched those lug nuts was when we had a Subaru dealer rotate our tires 3 months ago. Do other people regularly monitor their lug nuts for tightness? I wouldn't have expected to have to do that following a Subaru dealer visit.

Is this clearly the dealer's fault?
 
#2 ·
Likely, but I doubt you will ever get them to admit responsibility, and that's only fair if it's really been 3 months. Around here there are laws governing this (perhaps more so for commercial vehicles) but most, if not all shops have a disclaimer on the work order. You are responsible for returning within (something like) 30 or 50 Km for a re-torque. I swap my own tires and always check torque within a few days. That would be shorter except for the fact that I don't drive much these days.
 
#5 ·
Many years ago when I was a tech school I was taught that bolts sheer “in use” when they are too loose (never when too tight).

Of course the sheering can also happen when tightening.

Seagrass
 
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#7 ·
Dealer techs are people, and people make mistakes.

Your son was good to pay attention to how the vehicle feels and sounds, and check things out. I've seen people driving on flat tires or with a wheel at a 30 degree angle from a dead bearing, completely oblivious that anything was wrong.

In the case of the wheel bearing, the pickup was doing 60 MPH on the freeway, and he lost the wheel moments after I saw it. I got well away from him before it came off. Miraculously, no other vehicles got hit by the unguided missile.
 
#8 ·
A looong time ago, I sold my old Firebird for not a lot of money (it was pretty rusty). It had custom wheels on it, nothing super fancy just American Racing 5-spokes that came with the car when I bought it.
Not a week after I sold it, the new owner calls me and asks for help as one of the wheels slung a lug nut off while he was driving down the road. I go out and meet him and we find several of the lug nuts were loose. In the years that I drove the car, this never happened.
My suspicion was someone was attempting to steal the wheels from wherever he parked overnight.

Then there is this craziness too.
I had a lug nut fall off on it's own, but apparently there's a rumor that it's a thing on TikTok but it might not be real:


So if you personally checked the torque on all your lug nuts, something is probably amiss. I have found under-torqued lug nuts after a tire change, or tire rotation.
Full thread:
 
#11 ·
Friend of mine in high school lost a wheel while driving down the highway. Luckily it rolled into the ditch and not another car.

Him and another friend of mine had just worked on the brakes. One put on the wheel and snugged up the lug nuts by hand. He yelled at my other buddy(who didn't hear him) to torque them.

Definitely trust but verify!

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk
 
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