Glad you and others made it through this safely Jason. The carnage this could have created...well you already know that.
I bet this puckered you up a bit. LOL

Over the years I have racked miles I learned something from an old RV hauler.
He told me that rotating and re-torquing can be just as bad as leaving the lugs and nuts alone. Over time the threads/lugs stretch and no longer have the same tolerances. He recently had the exact same thing happen to him on his dually...on the front right. Nobody was hurt. He knew what happened and was kicking himself for not putting new lugs on the truck. He forgot. Its a weak link over time.

Something like this should be posted up over in the towing and hauling section for more to see. All bolts stretch and/or fatigue.

Glad all is well.

Scotty

 

We have some pretty big snow plows at work that always seem to snap the front left lugs. Never all at once, just find one or two missing on inspection or sometimes just snap off when re-torquing the lugs. Always/only the front left, something about the stress of the plow pushing it sideways I guess.

 

So...it seems that it maybe a good idea to refresh all the wheel lugs at least once on the life time of the truck...

 

I'll be ordering 32 new studs on Tue to hopefully prevent a recurrence-and see if I can convince Dad to do the same on his dually as it saw a ton of trailer pulling before we got it. I had once read in a car-focused Mopar mag that the 20 most important fasteners on your car were the wheel studs & nuts-guess I should have paid more attention to the article.

 

What was the price of 32 studs??My truck was a heavy puller when it was new...How much I don't know,but it had a gooseneck in it...Being that its now a retired street truck...with 429KMS...I'm going to renew the studs also...Piece of mind...Sure don't want to loose a wheel at 75-80 MPH..

 

I'm not sure what they're worth Dave-I won't know until the stores open Tuesday-and I'm going to replace them regardless for peace of mind. I think I may hold off on the front ones-on the '00-up trucks the studs come pre-installed in the replacement wheel bearing assemblies-the ones on here are not that old-I will have to go through my maintenance logs but at first thought well under 100K.

The remnants of the studs were trapped inside the rotor hat like Tate thought they may be. 7 of the 8 were sheared flush with the rotor, the 8th was broken behind the nut. I think it was the last to part company. It and 3 of the flush 7 had dark areas where I think they had been suspect for a while. Everything is still intact on the other side for now.

This truck is probably the poster child for this type of failure. 450K of mostly oilfield beating, 33" tires from 3500 km to 35000 km, then 35s from that point on until 2000 km ago. The last 10-15K of its life have involved a ton of trailer pulling with 2 heavy-pin-weight trailers-my 5th is over 2K of tongue weight, I believe the deck trailer empty is more even without loading it. It probably could have happened at any time-last weekend I was out with my holiday trailer-a few km on hwy 2 at speed to boot. The day before I had an '05 project up on the deck from Calgary to home. Lucky to have it happen with an empty trailer.

Reminder for the dually guys that there are 8 studs per side holding the adapter to the rotor, and another 8 holding the wheel to the adapter. We will be replacing all 32 plus the rear 16 on Dad's truck to make sure that it doesn't happen to him.

No real time to pucker at the time of the incident Scotty. But afterwards lots of time to think about how much worse it could have been. Cheap lesson to learn is the reality of it-if it saves someone else a problem, so much the better.

Jason

 

So was this truck a dually? If so did the wheels studs snap or the adapter studs?

 

Single wheel Clay-for now at least-and the failure was the left rear. Was just throwing the thought out in my earlier post for the dually guys that they have twice as many in the front to consider.

Jason

 

Yes...On our duallies...we have 16 nuts per side..on front

 

Gotcha, thanks. Was a bit confused as I knew it was the rear on your truck that broke but adapters are on the front.

 

I was thinking about if ARP had wheel studs available for our trucks. I think mine was fatigue failure as well. You have drum or disks? My truck has disks, sure was a fun job replacing the studs.

 

Disks-it wasn't that bad seeing as the wheel was already off. I have 4 old ones in it now to get a wheel on it and get it off the trailer. Calling NAPA in the next 10 minutes to order the new ones-hopefully I can pick them up this afternoon and install tonight to resume trailer-towing activities....I have another treasure to rescue up towards Ardrossan assuming it's still there.

Jason

 

Glad you made it out alive Jason.. Scotty had a really good point. You replace your head studs because they get stretched and no longer hold torque, so do the wheel studs. Especially if they are load stressed with bigger rubber, rim offsets etc.. Also the aluminum type rims are soft and flex a little that can cause other issues as well.

 

Dodge one;s Are very price Try mopac I think they sell ARP wheel Studs

http://www.arp-bolts.com/catalog/catalog.html


There are two Pages

 

Yeah, Chrysler ones are expensive-but NAPA ones don't fit....too short and knurl is too small. I can't fool around with this anymore as it's been out of commission too long as it is. I'm on my way to Drum in the next 1/2 hr to get the Chrysler ones and get it back on the road.