wheel fell off tractor i just bought

[bdog]

How many hours have you put on it since you bought it? If very few I would raise a stink. My guess is the fire went flat at the dealers lot and they fixed it and didn't get the lugs tight.

 

[Midniteoyl]

How many hours have you put on it since you bought it? If very few I would raise a stink. My guess is the fire went flat at the dealers lot and they fixed it and didn't get the lugs tight.

Yep.. Air wrenched on, got distracted, forgot to torque.

@op - Call the dealer and see what he says. More than likely they will help you out.

 

[Relic]

How was it able to "fall off"? Did you find all the lugs? Were they stripped out ? Did you reverse the wheels to change the front track ? How did you miss the signs of a very loose wheel (Steering leads and pull), wobble ride motions, very noisy, odd looking tire marks in the field, missing lugs on delivery. What was the condition of the other wheels?

I'm finding it hard to believe the wheel just "fell off" without notice, even if it was mis-piloted. Mine squeak like crazy if a lug was loose.

I have to agree.

 

[jmh1783]

I did it to my zero turn mower. I replaced the tires and didn't get them torqued down enough. My dad was doing the mowing since work got really busy. One weekend I noticed the wheels wobble. Both wheels were destroyed and so were the studs. Of course I couldn't just by wheels, they come with tires on them from the manufacturer so now I have an extra set of tires. Expensive mistake. Live and learn.

 

[GManBart]

Many important bolts/nuts, like lug nuts, are supposed to be checked periodically. Do most of us check them often enough? Probably not. I do know that with a new (or new to me) machine I check the lug nuts a few times early on to make sure they're staying put. I'll check them after a couple of hours use, then a couple more hours, and if they haven't changed, they aren't likely to going forward.

It's possible, if not likely, that the lug nuts were checked at the dealer, and loosened up after you started using it. Unfortunately, there's no way for anybody to know for sure. At best I think the dealer might help you out on the cost of the replacement parts.

You do get major bonus points for calling it a wheel, and not a rim (inside joke) :laughing:

 

[wango tango]

I've put about 10-15 hours on it, tops.

Dealer is selling me new wheel/studs at cost. Still a hefty bill, considering I also had to get a new tap, take wheel/tire to a tire shop and drive all over doing this.

As far as not noticing, not sure what to tell you. It is a cabbed tractor, with the air, sometimes music and RPM's up, you really dont hear much.

Manual calls for re-torque every 50 hours. I applied blue loktite, retorqued all the studs and put witness marks on the wheel/bolt.

Pretty obvious they didn't do this service. What burns me up is they did the 'tough ones' at 500 hours and such.

 

[GManBart]

Pretty obvious they didn't do this service. What burns me up is they did the 'tough ones' at 500 hours and such.

There is no way of knowing they didn't check all of the lugs....it's certainly not "obvious" because if it truly was, you would probably have some recourse with the dealer. It's certainly suspicious, and seems like they probably missed that wheel (how were the others)? But there is a possibility they did everything right, and it still loosened up while you were using it.

 

[wango tango]

There is no way of knowing they didn't check all of the lugs....it's certainly not "obvious" because if it truly was, you would probably have some recourse with the dealer. It's certainly suspicious, and seems like they probably missed that wheel (how were the others)? But there is a possibility they did everything right, and it still loosened up while you were using it.

Have you ever heard of anyone ever having a wheel fall off after the lugs were freshly torqued? Does not compute. 10 hours is not much.

 

[Midniteoyl]

Have you ever heard of anyone ever having a wheel fall off after the lugs were freshly torqued? Does not compute. 10 hours is not much.

Not on a tractor, but, I have had to re-torque auto and trailer wheels within 10-50 miles after watching the tire guy torque with w/ torque wrench and the super confirmed with another wrench.. It happens.

 

[GManBart]

Have you ever heard of anyone ever having a wheel fall off after the lugs were freshly torqued? Does not compute. 10 hours is not much.

Whether someone else did, or didn't have something similar happen doesn't have any affect on your situation, but yes I've seen people post about having a wheel loosen up after being properly tightened. As I said, it's certainly suspicious, and seems like they probably missed that wheel, there simply isn't any way to know for sure.

It's possible to have a situation where lugs were previously over-tightened, and that stretches them a tiny bit. After that they sometimes won't hold torque settings, and will loosen up very quickly. This normally happens when people use an impact wrench rather than a torque wrench. So, yes, it really is possible the dealer torqued the lugs and they still loosened up....maybe not the most likely situation, but certainly possible.