Almost lost rear wheel (coulda been bad)

[Mike S]

I'd thought I'd share this experience as a warning to others. Sorry it's kind of long...

My son, Chris, was in Colorado on my '02 R1150R staying with family. While out there, he and his uncle replaced the worn rear tire. I went out a couple weeks ago to ride back to TN with Chris on my FJR. While there, we did some awesome rides around Gunnison. On one ride up the Taylor canyon, my bro-in-law was leading, then Chris, and me in the rear. Suddenly Chris pulled to the side of the road. When I pulled up behind him he said that the R1150R was handling funny. We put it on the center stand and after a few seconds of wiggling stuff we realized that the lugs holding the rear tire on were loose! Holy $@#* !!! We tightened everything down, and finished the ride. When we got back to the BOL's house we took the lugs off, added some blue loctite, and re-torqued everything to specs. Everything was fine after that, and yesterday we got back to TN with no problem.

I really don't know why this happened. Both Chris and my BOL are experienced tire-changers, and I find it hard to believe that they did not tighten the lugs properly. They didn't use a torque wrench, but they remembered tightening them down hard using the standard cross-pattern. Chris had ridden the bike at least 1000 miles since the tire was changed. He did have one mid-speed, low-side slide out on a wet dirt road, but I don't see how that could have affected the tire. Either they didn't torque it down properly, or the lugs found a way to work themselves loose under normal use. I hope it's the former.

Like I said, I'm sharing this as a warning to others. It wouldn't hurt to check the lugs periodically. I'm also curious if this has happened to others. Is there a tendency for the rear lugs to work themselves loose on these bikes?

[philbytx]

Tightening rear lug nuts is a two stage process. From memory it is something like 65Nm cross tightening then 105Nm cross tightening. This should be done DRY and without Loctite!

If you didn't have a torque wrench (say, after a repair) you should check them with a torque wrench ASAP. Even after your initial lug nut "proper" torqueing, you should check the lug nuts with a torque wrench for 105Nm after a couple of hundred miles, just to be sure. Fortunately, I've never had to cinch them up any more when I checked them later. But, then again, I am entirely anal

[towerworker]

Thanks for the reminder on wheel tightening. And no I have never heard of any tendency for the lugs to come loose (unless they were improperly installed)

Wayne

[Boxer]

+1 on the two stage process...But I have always thought the stages involved torqueing while on the center stand and then the final 105nM while it was down on the side stand, under weight.
Whatever, I have never had mine loosen in the least when properly torqued that way.

[Mike S]

Yeah, I suspect that they didn't do the first stage. I've had this wheel off many times since I bought the bike 2 years ago, and have always used a 2-stage process. Never had a problem. We did the 2-stage thing when we re-torqued it back at the house.

In retrospect I'm somewhat responsible because I didn't warn them that they need to follow the procedures in the OM. It looks simple enough, but if you don't follow the rules it can get bad. They had no way of knowing.

[CycleRob]

They were afraid of breaking off the lugs or striping the threads and didn't tighten them enough. The English system torques are 35 ft-lbs for the first stage and 77 ft-lbs for the final torque.

The blue Loctite serves as a lubricant and will cause the lugs to be over-torqued. Cleaning it out of the female threads to return to "clean and dry threads" will be tedious.

You want a surprise? Use your torque wrench to loosen your lug bolts at tire change time. At my 600 mile check I did just that and it took 45 ft-lbs to loosen each one. Even at tire change time, it's always a little lower than the installation torque.

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