Hello, I thought I'd start a small discussion about this subject, just to see if anyone else has had a problem with wheel bearing bolt / stub axles shearing or breaking in any way? I've seen it happen on a few cars (pictures hopefully included below), but only those that are raced/tracked. As far as I've worked out it's something related to using a high torque gun and/or hitting a kerb hard that causes the nut to shear through the threaded section of the bolt. My thoughts....forces when hitting a kerb driving the bearing vertically or a high-toque air gun being used to tighten up the wheel bolt/stub axle and therefore elongating (and weakening) the threaded section where the wheel nut buts up against the bearing/hub. This is in no way a commercial post, I'm just keen to get others views on the issue and see how widespread it is. Thanks Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
99% of our cars do not have centrelock wheels, so not really applicable. Race cars get banged about and stuff breaks. That's racing...
Neither does the race car. The stub axle holds the wheel bearing to the hub. One step in from the wheel and wheel bolts. I'll see if I can dig up a picture to show where it sits a little better. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
That shaft has some galling on it where it goes through the bearing, indicating that it was loose at some point. The area where the lock nut was staked in looks like someone attacked it with a chisel. Do you know if it was loosened/tightened at some point in time (perhaps to replace the wheel bearing/hub)? My guess is that it was improperly torqued, Either overtorqued (and stretched) or undertorqued (allowing it to move around and suffer a fatigue failure). Hard to analyze without seeing photos of the surface of the failed areas.
