This all happened on the way to a party. I was driving along and started getting a weird vibration noise from the left rear tyre when decelerating. Hmmm, that's odd I thought. Then the rear end felt just a little loose on change of direction. Then when slowing down for traffic lights I could hear a rattle like noise in the rear wheel.

I wasn't far from my parents house, so I dropped my car there for the night and borrowed my mums car.

Then I went back today to pull the rear wheel off and figure out what was going on. When I removed the wheel I had found the axle nut and stub axle had sheared off!!! :o :o :o

All I can say is, lucky I have rear disc brakes. The rear caliper held the disc onto the stub axle (despite the missing nut). If I had of had drum brakes my whole rear wheel would've come off!





[ Edited on 3-3-2007 by Baja Wes ]

Muddaf####!!!!!!
lucky bugger, damn thats gotta hurt. Good thing that you made it out without a prang.

Oohh! Scarey.
I have seen this once before on a type three.

Ever since then I crack test mine with extra attention at the thread base.
Can be due to over tensioning.
I use factory specs and always use lube on the thread and nut face.

You can tell by the style of fracture marks on the break that it was directly attributed to the V6 engine.....:P

got to be glad you had the discs wes.
That could have spelt some nasty trouble if it came off while you were on the road travelling.
Time to check the axle on the other side now?

OUCH:cry

had that happen to me, except my drum did come off and it was rather nasty. my axle didnt shear the split pin had somehow gotten loose and the nut loosened itself.

lucky you wes, could have been a lot worse off.

i dont know you blokes are just too rough on your vehicles

jesus! you had good luck and rotten luck at the same time on that one

I've never had a wheel nearly come off like that, but I had a wheel nearly come off once .

In 2000 I set up my buggy for a big trip up The Great Central Road from Laverton to Alice Springs. I drove to Kalgoorlie with the rear end sort of feeiling a bit odd, but I couldn't find anything untoward. I Kalgoorlie I drove around town shopping all morning getting last minute stuff and the rear end felt even odder. While leaving a car park the rear end collapsed when I lost 4 wheel bolts at once. The rear wheel was being held on with one very loose bolt. I found the others nearby in a small cluster. It was all the result of not tightening the wheel nuts correctly. What scares me is that the wheel could have come off at speed on the highway or later on the gravel.

Those pesky axle nuts loosen up endlessly on some Formula Vees but not on others????????? Go figure.
I know my own car has loosened the axle nuts on a couple of occasions.

I use my Torquemeister tool and a 3/8" drive tension wrench and tighten up as per what Dave mentioned.
L8tr
E

I always lube the nut face and threads, but I have been doing the nut up with a rattle gun lately. I thought my rattle gun was lucky to be able to deliver 150ft.lbs.

When my car was swingaxle it had a habit of the nut loosening up. I think it was something to do with o-rings not fully compressing on the initial tightening. Then they would compress slowly with time and effectively loosen up the nut.

The only annoying part is it was a modified stub axle to handle a kombi CV, so I can't just chuck in any old replacement stub

drill, tap it and put in a bolt! :beer:beer:beer:beer:beer

Looks like its been cracked for while Wes. Just holding on with the inner 10mm or so. There was a post about overtightening these nuts in here a little while back.

The axle nuts need to be tightened to 220ft/lbs thats equal to a wieght of 220lbs placed on the end of a bar 1ft long.

1 lb = .45kg
1ft = 300mm

So if you are 80kgs and standing on a 600mm (2ft) bar attached to a 36mm socket thats probably tight enough. With lube, lube is good.


80kg jumping up and down on a 6ft bar is probably too tight!!!

Once I was driving and the car started vibrating severly, then I looked at my rear left window and saw one of my wheels bounce off onto the footpath.

yeah, looking at the fracture face the crack started on the tip of the thread, and first cracked only about 5% across (hard to see in the pics). There are no beach marks, so it didn't get fatigued at all (as you would expect, there is no reversing load at that point).

Then later on it cracked from the 5% to about 60% across.

It has then held on for a while before the last ~40% went suddenly and gives that crystaline appearance in the center.

Just have to keep looking for a replacement...

I have had the same 'OH MY GOD' feeling too: Once just after completing my IRS/Oval, I took a week off, drove to wagga to see a mate, raced all the local boguns in thier V8s, drove to Canberra then back to Sydney but instead of going straight home, kept driving up to the NSW Central Coast to see another mate. Got to within two blocks of his house...dink dink dink SCRAPE... and my left wheel overtook me

10 mins prior I had been pulling 160+ over Mooney Mooney Bridge, not to mention the hundreds of km of freeway and hooning/burnouts that week...

Mine looked the same - long term fatigue crack from base of thread (corrosion evidence) then failure of the last little bit

Might be a good idea for us all to check our axles... Ever since then, I have!

[ Edited on 5-3-2007 by VWCOOL ]

a smidge of locktite might help too wes

Nice tool!

Just machine another one up for now so you can come down to Stockton at easter........:thumb

:duh :o lucky it didn't do that at speed down hwy

Kurt at Vee dub repairs and spares in Fremantle, Perth had a couple the last time I was there (but that was 12 months ago........).

Luck break (no pun intended haha). Its a good example of the safety factor built into alot of auto parts, that you could run for a significant amount of time on much less than 50% of the area of the stub axle.....

Go buy a lotto ticket I reckon

thats the best move i bet you've made in ages, leaving the car at the folks..
lucky man..

U must have been using yr super strength Wes... Ive always hung off the nut with a length of pipe and tightened the axle nut

never broken one yet but i have broken a flywheel gland bolt using the same method

maybe your off road adventures have atributed to the cracking of the axle

what did Kenny Rogers say when he lost a wheel?
"You picked a fine time to leave me loose wheel"

I too have also jump on the end of the nearest pipe and tighten as much as I can. I wont waste any more money on those split pins now I see that they are useless.

Before a great ocean road trip I had a dodgy wheel bearing and took spares 'just in case'. When I slowed down into albury there was a terrible noise and I thought it was time. But it was the wheel nuts I had forgot to tighten after a wheel rotation once the kombi was off the jack.

I did the same thing at Adelaide raceway, after putting slicks on. That bloody wheel only lasted 1/4 mile and fell off on the return road.

Quote:

Originally posted by $2.63 homebrand baja :duh :o lucky it didn't do that at speed down hwy