Anyone who has seen my previous post I just got back into wheeling. Bought a used 500 ruby that had sat fo a couple years and did a bunch of maintenance unseizing and upgraded the rims and tires.

I have had the bike out for roughly 100 miles and it has worked beautifully, massive difference from the old 350 I once had! On the last trip though I had a wheel fall off, fairly disturbing when driving and seeing your wheel pass you!

At first I thought a wheel baring where the bike sat I expect certain parts to be dried out and fail but each ride I check things over. I was very surprised to find all 4 wheel nuts gone though apron inspection and know on a car they need to be checked after 100 miles but completely forgot got to do so on the bike. Was able to find one bolt and carry spares so quickly repaired and headed out. Checked all nuts and could easily do a 3/4 turn on all nuts so this was a valuable lesson.

Toward the end of the run I noticed a shake in the front when letting off over 40 and discovered an upper console arm bushing bad. Just completed that repair and replaced both bushings on the control arm and upper ball joint as I noticed its top cover was loose.




Ready for the next run1

 

Thanks for that reminder! I just put some new rims and tires on my Arctic Cat 400. I put the lug nuts on with a Craftsman cordless impact wrench, tried not to over torque. Was anxious to try them out, if I had lost any power going from 25" up to 27", so I took it out on the main road and let her rip. Happily , it still had similar performance, topped out at 55 mph, but just before I got home, I noticed a bit of vibration! Put the torque wrench on and , yikes, 2 wheels had lug nuts that were not even finger tight! Suddenly I thought of what a stupid thing that I did, If I'd wrecked at 55 mph, it would have been bad.

 

I've never had that experience with lug nuts coming loose. I had aluminum wheels(stock) on my Grizzly 660 and they never needed tightening. I always tightened them by hand, probably overtorqued them a bit. Its still a good idea to check them often, don't want a wheel coming off. I've topped out my Brute Force at 67 mph, I don't want to think about how bad I would get hurt if I wrecked at that speed. I know tire shops will tell you that you need to check your lug nuts on your vehicle but how many people actually do? You get a lot of people that come into those shops that wouldn't even know what a lug wrench is.

 

I was not going very fast and where it was a rear wheel the axel never even touched ground!

I have bever had had this happen to me before but was the first time with aluminum wheels. I used a dealt 20volt to start them then hand tighten them. I also know I am told at the dealer for my car to retourque and agree most do not follow up on it.

 

I didn't have any trouble with my alloy rims but didn't have that quad for long. I did have a problem with the steel wheels on the first quad I ever owned. The dealer did a brake job and didn't tighten the lug nuts enough when they put the wheels on. I noticed a clunk when I went around curves. Clunk to the left and clunk to the right. I stopped and figured out what it was. The left front wheel kept tipping back and forth. I took the lug nuts off since they weren't in the best shape and used one nut from each of the other wheels. I had 3 lug nuts on all 4 wheels which worked great.

I made it back okay but needed to replace those 4 studs. There was a groove worn into them where the threads were gone. Instead of buying relatively expensive lug nuts from the dealer I bought some whiz nuts from the hardware store. They were the same exact size as the factory lug nuts but had serrations on the flange instead of being smooth. Flange Whiz Nuts