Sounds silly but please check your lug nuts

[Shaun]

Hard to believe, but over the last 3 months or so, there have been a few cases of cars actually tracking with loose lug nuts. Besides the obvious danger of losing a wheel at speed, the secondary danger is reusing the same wheel or lug or lug nut that has already been damaged by the event (loose enough on a few lugs and there are huge prying and bending loads to the remaining 1 or 2 studs or bolts), which can later fail catastrophically.

The errors were made by decently reputable garages, wheel shops, race teams, and/or official marque distributorships.

So please check and torque your wheels up preferably before your drive up the NSH but also in the pits before you head out onto track, and perhaps just once more time mid-session. It only takes 20 seconds per wheel.

One of the the early signs of slight loose wheel is a fairly loud ticking noise when the car is driven at low speed (~10km/h)

 

[t_k]

Re: Sounds silly but please check your lug nuts

Recently experienced this as well.. Couple of days after I resprayed my rims I head a fairly audible ticking/knocking noise coming from my rear wheels at very low speeds. Turns out the shop had also spray painted quite a thick layer on the mounting face of the wheel (they shouldn't do this), so when the paint got squishy/rubbed away after a few days of driving the nuts were no longer as tight as they should have been. Got em to remove the excess paint from the mounting face and retighten the nuts and problem solved. Hopefully no damage done..

 

[hetraa]

Re: Sounds silly but please check your lug nuts

Rule of thumb, check yr nuts in the morning. make sure they are firm and tight.

Hard to believe, but over the last 3 months or so, there have been a few cases of cars actually tracking with loose lug nuts. Besides the obvious danger of losing a wheel at speed, the secondary danger is reusing the same wheel or lug or lug nut that has already been damaged by the event (loose enough on a few lugs and there are huge prying and bending loads to the remaining 1 or 2 studs or bolts), which can later fail catastrophically.

The errors were made by decently reputable garages, wheel shops, race teams, and/or official marque distributorships.

So please check and torque your wheels up preferably before your drive up the NSH but also in the pits before you head out onto track, and perhaps just once more time mid-session. It only takes 20 seconds per wheel.

One of the the early signs of slight loose wheel is a fairly loud ticking noise when the car is driven at low speed (~10km/h)

 

[Shaun]

Re: Sounds silly but please check your lug nuts

Recently experienced this as well.. Couple of days after I resprayed my rims I head a fairly audible ticking/knocking noise coming from my rear wheels at very low speeds. Turns out the shop had also spray painted quite a thick layer on the mounting face of the wheel (they shouldn't do this), so when the paint got squishy/rubbed away after a few days of driving the nuts were no longer as tight as they should have been. Got em to remove the excess paint from the mounting face and retighten the nuts and problem solved. Hopefully no damage done..

Ah good point. The ones I saw were factory or unmodified aftermarket rims, so there was definitely human error involved.

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hetraa, yes best if there's the discipline to do that