A correctly fitted wheel will never come loose – a statement that was drummed into me over my years at college, and something that has stuck with me ever since. But what constitutes a correctly fitted wheel?
Wheel loss can have catastrophic consequences for someone’s life – not just your business and O-Licence. What can we do as operators to ensure that wheels are fitted correctly?
The number one cause of wheel loss is human error. Be that laziness or incompetence, it is always human error that causes a wheel to come loose. How many times have you watched tyre fitters set to with an air impact wrench without a care in the world for your studs or nuts?
It is laughable that once they have run up the nuts, they proceed to put the torque wrench on to check that the nuts are in fact ‘really’ tight.
There are many guides out there that will tell you how to fit a wheel properly. This is how we do it:
- Mating faces must be clean and free from dirt, rust or paint. A wire brush is sufficient to achieve this, but there are some excellent face cleaners that fit on your nut gun available from Blue-Point or other tool manufacturers. We use Blue-Point as it always stocks replacement parts on its service vans.
- Always examine studs for signs of stretching. That is not always obvious, but it is a good idea to check while the wheel is off.
- Use a little bit of oil on the threads of the studs, and between the nuts and the washers. Make sure the washers spin freely to the nut with oil in between. A very light smear of copper grease on the mating face will ensure your shiny alloy wheel doesn’t weld itself to the hub face.
- When you fit the wheel, make sure it seats straight on the hub. Fit two nuts parallel to each other and run them up gently until they make contact. We then fit the remainder of the nuts and run them up to contact. The torque wrench is set to the correct torque (link to Bridgestone’s torque setting app below), and we tighten the nuts until the torque wrench clicks off.
There is no point torquing a wheel nut where the torque wrench clicks off with no movement, as this clearly means the nuts are over-tight.
Remember torque cards. How do you document that you have had a wheel off and that it has been refitted and torqued/retorqued? Amazon has us covered for these, and for £30 it will deliver a bag full.
Even if you do not fit wheels yourself, or don’t have a workshop, it is good practice to fill cards in and pop them into your maintenance records. Should the worst happen, “the tyre fitter fits them” won’t stand up in court.
We always torque wheel nuts to spec and run the vehicle for approximately 50km before a retorque. That gives the wheel chance to move and seat itself before the next torque is carried out.
If none of the nuts move, then the pointers are refitted, and the driver assumes responsibility for checking daily. If any nuts move on the second torque, then the wheels get torqued again and again until they cease to move. You can never torque wheel nuts too often.
Obviously, a good tyre management policy will include wheel fitment, and Google will give some excellent guides to follow and adapt for your own operation.
