Wheel came off at 70mph on freeway....

[WandaRunner]

Glad you're ok, and not to derail the thread, but what snorkel are you running?

Its off a Prado 150. Had some great body work guys here in Houston work the fenders to make it look fantastic after the accident. Really happy with how its turned out.

 

[WandaRunner]

Damn this sucks but glad you're OK. Have you checked the other 3 for damage or failure? What did the shop that did the work have to say about this?

Ended up taking off all spacers and replacing all lugnuts.

The worst part of the entire situation is the shops response. You install spacers and new wheels and tires on my rig and 2 days later my wheel comes flying off on the highway and you claim no responsibility? Unfortunate response and reaction. Just filed/served them last week. Ill let you know how it goes in court (only filing for actual repair costs, I am not an ambulance chaser by any means).

 

[WandaRunner]

Holy shitballs man. Glad you guys were able to have that thought about the wheel/tire bouncing down the road.

This is in now way a jab at you for running spacers, but this is exactly why I will not run spacers, on any vehicle. Yes, there are great companies out there that build them, Spider something pops in my head as the first choice. But it still adds a second point of failure where one didnt previously exist, and these trucks are too heavy for me to trust spacers on. I'm sure a good number of people will disagree with me, but spacers to me are a situation like this just waiting to happen. There's no reason at all if you use aftermarket wheels to not buy a set with the proper backspacing/offset from the get-go.

That said, seriously glad you're ok. Again, this is not a jab at you in any way, just voicing my opinion about spacers.

Completely understand your hesitation with spacers. I personally don't run them anymore (got better wheel offset). 99.99% of people run them for the life of the vehicle with absolutely no issues. But there is that occasional horror story.

 

[mrblah]

My buddy's studs/ lug nuts all sheared off on one tire. He didn't have spacers. What happened was he used a pneumatic torque wrench on his lug nuts, and that caused the studs to stretch and fail. Luckily his tire didn't fly off, one of the sheared studs had enough thread on it, that we used a lug off his other 3 tires to keep the rim from falling off, and limped his 4runner back to his house. We then took my vehicle out and were able to find the broken studs w/ attached lugs along the main road outside of his house.

Basically, as someone mentioned, it was caused by over torquing the lugs. How we knew this, was one of the broken studs fell backwards into his hub, when we disassembled the hub, we noticed that the "teeth" that holds the stud into the hub was pretty much stripped clean (due to over torquing it). The studs we found on the road, were all twisted and stretched. This is really difficult to do with a manual torque wrench, but very easy to do with a pneumatic one. So this has nothing to do with spacers, and can happen to anyone who uses a pneumatic torque wrench set improperly. Not sure if this has anything to do with the metallurgy of the studs itself that was supplied by toyota, so who knows if this is due to brittle metal....that I don't know. Luckily, for my buddy that the hub wasn't damaged, and those studs only cost 35 cents each to replace.

Moral of a story is to use a manual wrench, and hand torque it.

 

[the_economist]

Two facts from the 2016 T4R owner's manual:

1. Correct torque for lugs is only 76 ft. lbs. for aluminum wheels.

2. The manual has a warning not to use lube or anti-seize on the threads when putting lugs back on your wheel, as that can result in over-torquing.

As with many problems, just reading the full owner's manual and following the specs can save a lot of headaches.

 

[Ray Dunakin]

Yikes! What a scary situation. Really glad no one was hurt or killed, especially with that wheel going into oncoming traffic.

 

[Aesconde]

Same thing happened to me in my Sequoia. In my case the spacer lugs broke.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[1jzgte]

Here's the other thread where the same thing happened to someone else:

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/5th-gen-t4rs/240991-all-6-lugs-sheared-simultaneously.html

yea dude! i thought someone bumped that old post! i cant believe this is another incident

 

[4FL]

yea dude! i thought someone bumped that old post! i cant believe this is another incident

Lol, I thought the same thing.

 

[MyanRagahis]

Thanks for the welcome! Just moved from AZ about a week before Harvey came to town. We are headed down to PINS this weekend to do some volunteering/ fishing down in Corpus Christi.

Ah, not the greatest welcome with Harvey but hopefully all is well with y'all! If you'd like, there's a Facebook group "HTX T4R", feel free to join. They meet up every now and then. Had my first off road trip with them at Brazos Valley Off Road Ranch in College Station a few weeks ago. All nice people too.
Nothing like the mountainous photos I see people post here all the time but there's some off road parks around the area of which I need to experience still when I get the chance.

 

[mndart]

What a blessing that nobody was hurt, or worse. I nearly had the same thing happen to me in my MDX after a tire rotation. Fortunately I noticed weird sounds and vibes from the front right (funny... same location as yours) and pulled into a lot. 2 lugs had come off, 2 others very loose. The front driver's side was coming undone and a rear wheel needed tightening.

These shops are often understaffed, filled with distractions and multi-tasking. A great recipe for disaster. Any more, I check afterwards. I never want to have that experience again.

 

[darenwelsh]

Some questions from an ignorant guy trying to understand the root cause ...

Is the bolt shearing due to using the pneumatic driver? I ask because it seems like just about every tire shop does that. I don't know if I've ever seen them finish each bolt off with a torque wrench. But maybe I'm just not watching closely enough.

Is this on the stock rims or one some specific kind of aftermarket? Or is it independent of the rim style?

 

[zerowkul98]

I am surprised to see you say it was too little torque! Looks like the sheared studs would have happened from way too much torque.

I learned that these trucks only require 83 ft lbs early on. I took the truck to tire shop to switch out dunlops to duratracs within 1,000 miles of purchase. Watched the kid use a pnumatic gun and i said something to them only to get a bs response that it had torque control or some nonsense. Upon inspection i found 2 completely sheared studs and a third that was very stretched.

I have "83 ft lbs ONLY!" written on my wheel lock in sharpie and covered with clear tape to protect the writing. Have not had a problem again with that reminder on there. Also i have seen discount tire receipts that show 85 lb ft as s the reminder to the tech.

I just irdered the TRD black wheels and will be switching them out myself. Is 83 ft. Lbs. the proper torque for all OEM lugs/wheels?

Thank God the OP is safe.

 

[the_economist]

You can find the proper torque setting for your year and wheels in the owner's manual. It's in the "what to do in an emergency" section under tire changes. There's a spec for aluminum and steel wheels, separately.

 

[2016 4Runner SR5]

I have my FN Wheels FX Pro torqued to 90 ft lbs by hand and with no spacers. So far so good 6000 miles later. I do check them every so often to be sure they are all still at 90 and 95% of the time they are.

 

[zerowkul98]

You can find the proper torque setting for your year and wheels in the owner's manual. It's in the "what to do in an emergency" section under tire changes. There's a spec for aluminum and steel wheels, separately.

Bought my 2016 used, and there was no owners manual in it. Come to think of it, any used toyota ive bought has been minus the owners manual. Do they go to the same dimension as all my missing socks?

 

[2016 4Runner SR5]

Bought my 2016 used, and there was no owners manual in it. Come to think of it, any used toyota ive bought has been minus the owners manual. Do they go to the same dimension as all my missing socks?

Check the dryer for the manual and glove box for your socks! My wheels use aftermarket lug nuts, not the stock style. I can tell you the SpiderTrax wheel spacer manual says torque to 85 ft lbs and I believe my manual says stock spec is 86 for aluminum wheels. This is the first vehicle I have ever torqued lugs on. I always just went tight with a lug wrench. I'm 6'2" 220 pounds and I LEANED into then hard. Maybe I was lucky all these years, maybe not, who knows.

 

[mrblah]

Some questions from an ignorant guy trying to understand the root cause ...

Is the bolt shearing due to using the pneumatic driver? I ask because it seems like just about every tire shop does that. I don't know if I've ever seen them finish each bolt off with a torque wrench. But maybe I'm just not watching closely enough.

Is this on the stock rims or one some specific kind of aftermarket? Or is it independent of the rim style?

its because they set the torque settings incorrectly on a pneumatic driver at a tire place. My tire guy, uses a pneumatic torque wrench to take off, and put it back on, but he will manually check it prior to taking the car off the lift.

 

[e60ral]

it's called a torque stick or "torque limiting extension bar"

 

[xnodesirex]

[MENTION=180098]WandaRunner[/MENTION] dang glad youre okay!

Same thing happened with another forum member here. Toyota screwed up but denies claim. not sure what happened after.

I carry my torque wrench in my cargo to also double check. trust no one! lol

Hey that's me!

Toyota dealer didn't do shit. The wheel had been on the tire for around 1k miles, so they said it was too long for them to have any responsibility. No one touches my truck, so thankfully insurance did it's job. Unfortunately the shop in the small town it happened in was a piece of shit.

Wasn't worth trying to small claims, as that level of milage was a coin flip on if the judge would care.

Needless to say I check the lugs frequently. Still a bit nervous getting behind the wheel, and I feel phantoms in the wheel all the time (like a wheel is getting loose, but it never is).

Really glad OP is okay!