<VV> Loose axle

[Hugo Miller]

If it was the left rear and if it had a central spinner, it would be 
right-hand thread. If it hjad conventional lug nuts it would be, or 
rather SHOULD be, left-hand thread, because the forces work in the 
opposite direct. But with cone-shaped lug nuts, the forces are very 
small, and they are never going to be enough to overcome the resistance 
of the tapered seat. Assuming they were done up in the first place of 
course!


On 2020-03-07 15:30, Byron LaMotte wrote:
> Hugo,
>      This is a fantastic explanation! Yes it was the left rear
> wheel. But it was a while back and I can't answer as the thread
> direction as I immediately went back to bolt on wheels. 
>
> On Fri, Mar 6, 2020 at 9:30 AM Hugo Miller <hugo at aruncoaches.co.uk
> [1]> wrote:
>
>> Was it a stock wheel? Left-side wheel nuts (lug nuts) should be
>> left-hand thread, and on quality cars in the UK (Rolls Royce,
>> Bristol)
>> they were at one time. This is to counter the effects of
>> precession,
>> which is too complicated to explain in a short e-mail, but it is
>> the
>> reason the left pedal on a bicycle will have a left-hand thread
>> holding
>> the pedal on, which seems counter-intuitive, as the rotation of
>> the
>> pedal around the shaft will tend to unscrew it. But the forces of
>> precession act in the opposite direction, and they are reckoned to
>> be
>> stronger. Basically, if you imagine the pedal being very loose on
>> a
>> plain shaft with no bearings in it, the shaft will tend to 'walk'
>> around
>> the inside of the pedal as it rotates, and that is precession.
>> There was and still is a debate in the UK about what the
>> government
>> calls "Wheel-loss syndrome" on coaches. Typically of governments
>> everywhere, instead of fixing the problem, they call it a
>> 'syndrome'.
>> Basically, the story is this; traditionally, all British-built
>> commercial vehicles used conical wheel nuts (like a car) to locate
>> the
>> wheels, and more importantly, they used left-hnad threads on the
>> left-side nuts. So far so good. But then we adopted the European
>> system
>> of spigot-fixed wheels, using flat-faced nuts and, more
>> importantly,
>> they used right-hand threads all round. And the left rear (twin)
>> wheels
>> immediately began falling off all over the place. The government
>> even
>> launched a competition to find a way to keep the wheels on.
>> Idiots! All
>> they have to do is use left-hand threads and the problem goes
>> away. I
>> did try to explain about precession to the relevant govt dept, but
>> I
>> don't think they understood it. Anyway, our left rear wheels are
>> still
>> falling off, only now it's not an engineering problem but a
>> syndrome.
>>
>> On 2020-03-06 08:58, Byron LaMotte wrote:
>> > Yikes, I thought it was just me. I lost a LR wheel at 60 mph.
>> > Fortunately there was a grassy area to the left to move over to
>> for a
>> > soft landing. 
>> >