Loose LugBolts-WARNING:Run 0n Sentences Ahead

And the big question...how much do the 360 Ti ones cost? Do all 360's come with those from the factory?

Speaking of over-torqueing my right front is still stuck on, bolts haven't budged up to 150 ft-lbs. I'm waiting until I'm at a shop where I can drill them out before applying any more torque.

 

The design difference on the 360 bolts is a small 'ring' at the base of the head which helps the bolt seat more squarely. It provides a flat face upon which the wheel & bolt are squarely mated. You can see this design in my below-listed link for Titanium bolts. The steel ones from Hill Engineering have the same mounting face, although steel ones are socket installed not hex-tool installed.

The price of Titanium bolts from Ferrari, although quite high, is not out of line with the titanium market in general. For a long time, Ferrari pricing was significantly cheaper than the raw Ti price, and the bolts were a relative bargain at $50/ea. Alas, no more.

The steel Hill Engineering 360 bolts are: http://www.ricambiamerica.com/product_info.php?products_id=224428

Ferrari Titanium bolts are http://www.ricambiamerica.com/product_info.php?products_id=262660

 

Bruce, I'm not sure wht that point of your thread is except that perhaps you are having an illicit and unhealthy afair with your Ti lug bolts.

As for over-torquing, well don't do it, is all I can say. Stretching the threads or otherwise strtessing lug bolts is a disaster waiting to happen, or at the very least, is calling for a mandatory replacement before their life cycle end. I do mine to 72-75 lb.ft. and check them monthly or so when I check the tire pressure. Big deal.

As for the Ti replacements, congrats on a shrewd EBay purchase, but I can find other toys to spend my cash on.

 

What's involved in replacing the wheel inserts? My bolts come loose all the damn time... They loosened up so badly on my way from VA to FL that one of the bolts broke, 3 backed out, and only one was holding my wheel on. Car shook so badly the engine went into failure mode and shut off. I replaced them all and now I keep them torqued to 80ft/lbs and they don't loosen up anymore, but I am a bit worried about the condition of the inserts. Is that a big job, $ and time wise?

-R

 

Very surprised--I had never heard anyone complain of loose lugs on a 355---I replaced 3 of them a few months ago because the chrome had chipped off with the stock ones from Ricambi. While I was inserting them , I checked the torque on all the others and it was right at 72lbs(stock)....So I guess mine doesn't have this problem, but I will keep an eye on them...

 

My personal experience on magnesium 355c wheels and stock 348 bolts is that it does not matter. Sure the torque is like 75ft lbs. by the book. The 14mm diameter fastener assuming 10.9 class metric threaded can take 180 lb-ft by the standard known metric bolt charts. I have always torqued by hand and much more than 75ft lbs with zero issues and no loosening and no wheel damage to soft magnesium. Sure Bruce describes some possible issues but I have never seen it. Also if people are using non-beam torque wrenches (tw) or uncalibrated wrenches then they may not be getting 75ft lbs even if the wrench says so. Clicker TW's can easily be 30% off accounting for thinking you have proper torque when you really do not! The calculated force that bruce describes of a dynamic wheel is more of an issue with 4 loose bolts and one tight one. 5 tight bolts form a ridgid strcuture and I do not know if the math bruce is thinking of applying is appropriote and really describes the forces on the threads. Also, threads are an issue but only as it pertains to fastener diameter. There is alot more than we can post here about how fasteners work but it is way more involved than just the thread. There are multiple factors within the thread itself that could be a doctoral thesis. My point really is when peopel see torque specs they need to look at fastener diameter and class and decide it the torque is a resonable number. In this case by standard tables 75 is not even 1/2 of what that bolt can take. So if we get 75 or 95 it really does not make any difference as far as hurting the wheel. And finally before anyone says well what about squishing the matting surface well a correctly designed fastener has to mate with a correctly designed mating surface so that correct bolt streatch in the threads ensures no back out when proeprly torqued. This is standard operating proceedure and low tech and i am sure even the cheap guys at Ferrari could figure it out. I will say TI bolts are cool and light and man Bruce good ebay steal!

 

Im with you FBB! Those wheel bolts CAN take more than 74lbs.
I tightened mine up to 90lbs all round the other day. No issues and there will never be any. Also........these bolts are cool, but you will never see me paying that much for any wheel bolt.

 

Over, or uneven, tightening of wheel bolts was widely reported to be the cause of warped disks back in my days as a Corvette owner. This was probably tyre places using a windy-gun at full force on one bolt at a time though. It's not something I have ever worried about, I just torque-up nice and evenly to a minimum of the book value - the bolts always seem tighter if anything when I come to remove them.

BTW are we talking dry or wet torque settings here? I'm guessing the wrench will 'click' at a significantly different point with a dry as opposed to greasy bolt.

 

That is exactly right Chris. I am not sure what it states in the owners manual about greased wheel bolts? When I removed my bolts the other week, they were coated in grease. Not something I normally do myself, but anyways. I still torqued them back up to 90lbs.

 

IM with you, never had or heard of problems until the wheels were starting to get repainted. The body shops never masked the lug bolt seats and they ended up with paint build up. Once the paint started chipping away the bolt became loose.
There are now a couple of 355's that I see that will need the inner wheel mating surface recut and trued at the next tire change due to this corrosion issue. The two cars I speak about have lost some 30+% of their contact area already between the wheel and the hub. With the dry desert climate we have this is not a regular problem here but regardless, finding the cause quickly is a necessity. I believe that in the damp climates there is a galvanic corrosion issue due to the Alum/mg wheel in direct contact with the steel rotor. This condition would be made worse with static electricity from tire and suspension movement and a little dampness.
It could be that the problem I think exists is more wide spread than I thought and I only see it occasionally due to out of state transplant cars moving here.
My plan is to recut the inner wheel mounting surface and completely clean the rotor and hub and repaint the surfaces with a zinc chromate primer. This primer has such a small film build that is should not present any issues in that respect.

It would sure help if someone that has had the wheels loosen up would take one off and see if and how much corrosion is present on the mating surfaces.

Dave

 

I understand that if you grease your brakes you go faster too...

 

Thanks for #3 bcwawright From what I could gather from the handful of threads on fchat about the loosening wheel bolts, it's most commonly found on the rear driver's side (passenger side for you UK, Japanese, and South African folks..) due to the direction of rotation. Since the rear left wheel is spinning in the "loosen" direction, the bolts start to back out after vibrating loose for whatever reason. It's something I've learned to deal with by keeping a torque wrench in the trunk and tightening them up every couple of weeks.

Your story about Circuit de le Sarthe is an important one though, in that it really illustrates the importance of the small stuff. What I've noticed is that my bolts tend to loosen up on high speed runs, almost instaneously. If I go over 120mph I know I'll be tightening my bolts when I get home. This scares the crap out of me and makes me wish I could find an easy fix for it. I've never heard of replacing the threaded inserts though.. I figured I'd have to replace the whole hub assembly. I guess no one here has done this, and my local dealership apparently hasn't dealt with the problem before. I just like to have an idea for what I'm getting into, ie whether I'm looking at a $500 fix or a $5000 fix, and whether someone else has dealt with it and has any advice. If not, I guess I'll look into it and do a write-up.

-R

 

I also coat my tyres in grease to go that 'little' bit faster also.

 

You replace the inserts in the wheel not the hub

 

Bruce,

1) I hope that you are not leaving Fchat as you are a valuable resource. Guys like you really need to contribute to help further the fchat education.

2) I also hope you are not feeling "run off" expecially by my post. Surely that is not my intention.

3) You bring up a very important issue that needs further research if it is a widespread issue. Personally I don't see it but if it is widespread I may see it on my own car and that is concern enough to try an understand it.

4) You raise so important questions which I don't have the answer for. My understanding of fasteners is limited. I read a chart vs diameter note clsss typae and lookup max torque which happens to be wet 10wt oil. I also understand that the mechanics of tightening a fastener is actually putting stretch into a bolt through number of threads and surface area of threads and pitch of threads and things like that. I also assume that if you use a fastener that is rated at 180 then I guess it needs 180 to achieve appropriate stretch. I do not know the dynamics of submaximum torque. I can also only assume that a) ferrari probably designed the mating surface to be compatible with the diamter bolt thus also able to take 180, b) that probably I am safe using a torque range 75 (book value) to 180 (max on the charts). I do not think my reasoning is flawed and personal experience seems to confirm my thinking but someone like yourself with more knowledge could easily teach me where I am wrong and I am all ears. So I hope you don't leave your thread.

And to lighten up the mood you gotta see this:

http://www.teamjamoto.com/dixeregionpage.htm

 

Dave can you just smear antiseize? I use it on my lugbolts and anything else I don't want to gall. I think it has not only antiseize properties but also prevens some galvonic corrosion just because it is kinda oily. I have use it on aluminum to steel mating surfaces on trucks in the past with good result after having to resort to lossening the bolts on a wheel once and jacking a truck and droping it to lossen the wheel off the hub! This is really bad but I was pissed and it worked. I have also used heat "judiciously" and wd40 on aluminum hats stuck to metal hubs. So far I've got all those off too. Then I use antiseize on the Al hat never to have a problem again. Keronite sounds neat and expensive. I have no idea who could do this for me. I'd go this way if it was cheap, easy, and easily available to back yard guys like me.

 

As a boy I wintnessed my dad hitting a wheel on his (not so old) Audi with what appeared to be a railway sleeper to remove it. The 'drop off the jack' method sounds pretty hi-tech!
I have always given the mating surfaces a light aerosol spray of copper grease and never had a problem with hub/wheel corrosion on my cars. I tend to take off the wheels comparatively regularly though so they don't get time to stick.

 

I used to use Tagonite coating for Hewland (Mg)Trans cases on the race cars but I know nothing about the Keronite. The Tag was a coating devoloped for Bell Helicopters and all their mag pieces. Heavily used in the Mil-Spec industry. Im sure that Keronite is a update/variant of that. Tag was only done by one company in N. Dakota as I remember and as with everything Mil Spec, yes they were damn proud of it and private race teams stood behind the military in the line to get it done. That was then, maybe more are doing it now and the price came down. Now there are many electrostatic coatings that can be used but there is a down time for them all. Doesnt work to have a car holding up a stall/hoist/owner in this industry durning driving season.
For years I used antiseize on the shoulder of the hub to the wheel mating surface as they corroded very bad. It did help but there was always a slime issue as so many of the 355 wheels are now missing the rubber collar.
I had a long debate with Ferrari reps years back regarding lubricants on wheels, lug bolts and a very long one on theF40 and F50 wheel nuts. The reps stance on this was zero lubricants, even stated in the F50 manual if I remember correctly. The engineers were concerned about hydro-lock and a resulting loose bolt/nut. To support their argument, they did Parkerize the bolts on many of the street cars lug bolts but that is a short term solution and didnt help the F40-50 nut issue. The F50 was a no brainer as it had the lock cap so I always used WD-40 on the taper and torqued to spec and never had a gauling issue again. When WD was used on the F40 and we mounted the slicks and tracked the car the lube aided the nut to over tighten while under hard braking and was near impossible to remove. I polish out the gauling on these and torque dry.
I use antiseize on all the wheel bolts for every street and race car and have never had a wheel loosen up. We have well exceeded the 150 MPH speed point and that is under road race conditions on the track with constant turning and braking.
Obviously there are some dynamics I dont understand here (or my theory about erroded contact surfaces might be correct) as I cant see 5 bolt system loosening up due to rotational forces. A single center lock nut or bolt happens all the time as they are designed to tighten under braking and only one in 100 actually torque them with a torque wrench. I still remember a call from a tow truck driver stuck on the Lake Street bridge in Mpls with a TR missing the front spoiler and both front wheels. The wheels passed him, hit the curb, hopped up and over the railing and are now a spawning bed for carp in the Mississippi river. A BAD day to be him!

FBB, have you ever had a 5 bolt wheel loosen?

Dave

 

Dave,

I have never had my bolts loosen on any car or any ferrari including my one data point 348 race car. I am however, a chronic "overtorquer" when it comes to wheel bolts. I have seen others loose a wheel on non-ferrari's at the track some using torque wrenchs. I think the biggest issue is people believing their torque wrenches and not using some common sence with them. 1) I still maintain that many are improperly calibrated or not to spec expecially el cheapo sears craftsman clicker types, 2) on the occasions where fasteners are critical and I do use a Torque wrench I progressively tighten with a "hand wrench" and alternating beam type torque wrench so that in my hand the tightness of a fastener makes sence or is verified by what my torque wrench says. In my opinion this is especially important with clicker wrenches and my tools are not professional grade so I don't trust them nor do I have the other tools to verify they torque within spec.

 

This is my greatest fear, that my clicker torque wrench is not calibrated correctly. 75 lbs. is just about where I am straining to release the bolt, so that's my test of reasonableness. Maybe I should come over, fbb, with my wrench and we can compare settings. Let's get the stooges together for a torque wrench test off and see what we get!

 

Absolutely, beam type all the way. I want to see that thing deflect to know what's happening...