Hey guys, My neighbor has a bad habit of losing wheels off his machines. I think he has lost of wheel off every machine he has ever owned. Its not uncommon to find his wagon wheels in my fields at harvest time. This weekend, a dual fell off his combine. The same thing happened to his last combine, a different brand. Anyone else out there having this problem, or is it only him?
Sounds like he might be older and having heath issues if all his wheels are falling off. When I put duals on my tractor (clamp on), it takes a few hours of use and servel times with me re-checking the torque. Aint no way my duals would stay on with just one bolt adjustment. :drinkup
if he keeps losing his wheels on all his equipments I'm be checking the neighbour for someone doing it.
Sad to say you probably are correct. An idea hit just as submitted. You may be able to look at the nuts of the wheels lost and see sign of wrench on the side of the shoulders that would loosen them if this is true. If this is possible problem it might be good to look at all his equipment for such sign. Never have used Lock Tite on such but they make one for such.
One thing a lot of guys just don't tighten them properly because they just don't realize how tight some of these are supposed to be. Especially skid loaders wheel nut torque is often much higher than a standard lug nut. Our bigger skid is supposed to be 225 ft. lbs. A torque wrench is the only way to go. A guy with just a breaker bar will often quit before it's tight enough.
The only case I have seen was a poor job of proper torque to begin with. It is a good idea to check them on occasion as they will loosen over time if not properly set.
We had a kid that bought a new Mac impact wrench and thought it would get wheel bolts tight enough. He predelivered 3 new combines and after the wheels became loose on the first two he did, they checked the wheels on the third combine and sure enough they were loose. Luckily the farmers all heard an unusual noise and quit running the combine before catastrophic damage occured. We had to buy two sets of wheels and all the hardware. Now he uses the impact to tighten the bolts, and the torque wrench to finish tightening them. No more problems.
I had a subcontractor on one of our jobs lose a wheel on his Case skid. He had to buy a new wheel and studs and a tire (foam filled so no way to take it off and save it). When he was putting the new wheel on I saw he was using the lug wrench from his car with about a 1 foot handle. He had a lot of experience so of course when I offered the use of my torque wrench he was offended.
I use a torque wrench on all my vehicles as well as my equipment. If I remember right my Gehl skid took 160 ft. lbs. My one ton pickup gets 125 and I figure since my life is riding on those wheels it is time well spent to torque them.
Had a wheel fall off back axle of combine once bolts broke off steering assembly
We had an several Allis 4WD's and 7000 series tractors with clamp-on duals. We had to retorque the bolts at least a half dozen times to make sure everything was seated and tight. If we were hauling manure on asphalt the bolts got checked every 1-2 days just to be safe. The only wheel I remember loosing was on our Balzer 5000 gallon manure tanker. I suspect the thread in the hub were a little loose because we ended up using longer bolts and putting nuts on the back side. When I worked for CaseIH we just used a 1" pnuematic impact and hammered them home. But those were all tractors with steel wheels onto a hub. And definitely no 1/2" impact, MAC or not! ISZ
OK when was the last time any of you had your torque wrench calibrated? Temp changes over 30 degrees, dropping it and other things (time) mandate this to be accurate! The biggest thing an uncalibrated wrench will do for you is give uniform torque. The average shop doing engine rebuilds hasn't had a wrench calibrated in a very long time! Rick
I won't disagree about calibrating torque wrenches and by all rights they should be calibrated regularly, but in practice the design does make a difference. The old beam/gauge style tend to do quite well if they aren't thrown around a tool box. I've also had good luck with the digital ones (1/4" - 3/4"). The worst in my experience is the "clicker" type, I swear some of them go out of cal if you look at them wrong! We had a 1" blue point that was always getting worked on, unfortunately the boss thought it was cheaper to keep fixing it instead of getting a better one. ISZ
I was at my local equipment shop the other day and overheard a technician telling his boss he was heading out to deal with 7 cracked rims. These are wagon rims, the owner has 15 -12 tonne wagons. The undercarriage brand totally dominates the Ontario market. Its the only wagon anyone sells pretty well. They run used truck tires, and put 12 or 13 tonne on them fully loaded. The wheels are Unverferth coloured, so i hit up the Unverferth rep at the farm show. I was looking for a response. He said those wheels aren't Unverferth, he thought they were Alliance wheels. I discussed this problem with the shop owner who services these wheels all the time, and impressed upon him that one of these days someone is going to get killed because of this. He should be convincing these guys to go to a heavier rim for those wagons. We'll see what happens. I'm just worried someone is going to get hurt. And when that happens, the government is going to decide wagons need to be safetied etc, I might even need a class A to haul a wagon.