Check Your Nuts!

[elkaholic]

Posted this on the 70s sevtion, but felt it applies to all our trucks ....

I was installing 1 1/4" spacers on the rear of my BJ74 today to match the spacers that are on the front of the truck. Install was going smoothly ... I was on the first spacer and had the tire back on with the lug nuts finger tight. I started torquing the nuts to spec and on the second nut, as there started to be some resistance (maybe at 30-40 lb-ft), the resistance suddnely went to nothing ... WTF?

Then the head of the nut came off

These are Toyota mag style lug nuts and AFAIK, they are original. I have never seen a lug nut separate like this, but I can tell you that I am replacing all of them ... see the pics.

Soooo ... the moral of the story is this: on our 20+ year old trucks, check your nuts

 

[OGBeno]

Uh.... No brainer dude. First thing I did was get 27 new lug nuts.

Nutz are important .

 

[GLTHFJ60]

It looks to me like the stud bottomed out in the top of the nut, then the shank sheared as it was stretched.

Impressive

 

[elkaholic]

Johnny, it looks like it, but the studs were not that long. In cases where that has happened, I've always seen the very top blow off the nut.

New nuts will be here tomorrow ...

 

[Roxx]

It looks to me like the stud bottomed out in the top of the nut, then the shank sheared as it was stretched.

Impressive

Jonny has a point here. It looks like there bottom of the nut hit the spacer before the nut grabbed the wheel. Is the washer the right size?

 

[elkaholic]

The studs, both OEM and the ones on the spacer are about 1/4 inch shorter than the nut. The head basically fell off and the threads in the head of the nut never engaged the stud. The nut had been cracked for some time as there was rust in the fracture area for at least half of the area ....