So, I have been off this week but had a phone call from my office on friday asking me to come into the office monday morning rather than just go straight to wagon and crack on.
The Friday before I was off I had to pull over and get scania out to check my brakes but no wheels where removed. Just a quick look underneath. So Saturday morning rolls around and I’m doing my checks and all my wheel nuts are fine and pointing in the right direction.
Set off on my 180 mile trip back to the mechanic’s to get my brakes seen to. Clear my gear out into my car and park the wagon. Do a quick walk round and again everything is good.
So, fast forward , the phone call from my office is this. “We’ve had the mechanic on the phone and they say all your wheelnuts where lose on the nearside front axle , if you had driven out the gate it would have fallen off. Just nip in the office Monday and have a quick word”.
So I’ve been racking my brain all weekend. My front axles had tyre changes not to long ago (put this in my diary ) but the whole alloy wasn’t taken off, they just crowbarred the tyre off and put the new one on.
We are encouraged to defect anything with these wagons as they are old and they are trying to get refleeted. So if I saw something I sure as hell wouldn’t have driven from the beacons with a dodgey tyre.
Was just wondering if anyone else has had this issue before on 53 reg Scania’s? I have a defect book and have made notes in my diary of all break downs , fixes and such to match the defect book.
I’ve even been pulled by the police on a carriage of dangerous good check and got a clean sheet with “all in order” on so it’s not like I’m neglecting my checks.
Peter Smythe:
Sounds like a bit of old fashioned buck passing to me. I may be wrong, but I don’t understand how this scenario could really happen.
Pete [emoji38] [emoji38]
That’s what I’m thinking as well. It seems far fetched but it’s what I have been told. They don’t just come loose to the point they are all out of line do they?
If the company don’t have a proper re-torque system in place, and when you started and finished with the vehicle the wheelnut pointers were all still ok, then it’s got nothing at all to do with you so deny all knowledge…if they want to push it then they need to produce the records of the re-torques.
It’s an exaggeration anyway because those pointers would have been all over the place had the wheels been as loose (wheels falling off on the first bend) as the fitter is alleging.
I have heard that some people, who presumably got their licences out of corn flake packets, have been known to reset the pointers back in line to save them the bother of getting the wheels torqued, daft as it sounds.
A proper well qualified real engineer not a fitter once explained to me that every bolt torqued to manufactures tolerances is always stretched a wee bit otherwise they would not be doing the intended the job correctly, not wheel studs but marine engine cylinder head bolts and big buggers to boot. Don’t know if the same principle applies but imagine it does.
raymundo:
A proper well qualified real engineer not a fitter once explained to me that every bolt torqued to manufactures tolerances is always stretched a wee bit otherwise they would not be doing the intended the job correctly, not wheel studs but marine engine cylinder head bolts and big buggers to boot. Don’t know if the same principle applies but imagine it does.
There are some cases where the specified torque stretches the bolts to the extent that they must not be re-used but replaced with new ones (some car cylinder head bolts, for instance).
Wheel bolts/studs I would expect to only be ‘stretched’ within the elastic limit of their material and so would return to original length when loosened, provided correct tightening torque had been used.
Peter Smythe:
Sounds like a bit of old fashioned buck passing to me. I may be wrong, but I don’t understand how this scenario could really happen.
Pete [emoji38] [emoji38]
That’s what I’m thinking as well. It seems far fetched but it’s what I have been told. They don’t just come loose to the point they are all out of line do they?
Perhaps the Wheel got fitted with Air-Hammer but not with Torque Wrench,put Yellow stuts on and finish.
Whether they were torqued or not, still not Sinclair’s problem.
One other point OP, do you as a driver have access to a certified and calibrated torque wrench with the correct sized sockets, are you trained to use it, are there standing instructions to get re-torques performed.
They can’t punish you for their lax wheel monitoring system.
"We’ve had the mechanic on the phone and they say all your wheelnuts where lose on the nearside front axle
could mean the nuts were loose when using a wrench, ie. not at correct torque,
but if the markers were lined-up how were you to know.
as said, ask them to tell you from their records when they were last re-torqued as they could have been like that for a long time.
I have access to all the records to when they where last torqued. I have a defect book assigned to ME which I take in every wagon. I also keep diary entries of stuff like this. 99% of the time I’m in this wagon as well so I also have good knowledge of its previous history (well from since I started driving it)
Yes they looked like the picture, in the photo that was shown to me. But not at any point during my daily checks or other checks.
After a quick talk to my boss, he asked me what happened. I explained my day to him. Checked the wheel nuts on my daily checks. No wobbling of the steering wheel. No issue when I did quick walk around check after my break.
Judehamish:
I wonder if someone has tried to steal the wheel at some point and been disturbed in the process. This happened to my girlfriends car.
Not from where I left it. Mechanics is on a secure industrial estate and it was parked outside the garage door where 2 of the mechanics where working on another vehicle
Conor:
Stretched wheel bolts is another possibility especially if they’ve been overtightened.
I had this on a decker trailer once,
All the pointers were in correct position,
went from London to Brum,
when I screwed around to reverse onto a bay, heard a load of clonking & metallic banging,
when I checked the wheels, the front offside pair were loose, the washers could be turned on the studs, but all the pointers were still in place,
Had to get the fitters out with new hub, new studs, and a new pair of wheels (as the holes had gone oval)
