I used to check for tightness after long descents, when everything had cooled off a bit. Without an exhaust brake, the front drums would get cherry red at times and sometimes I’d have to snug up a loose nut or two. In days of yore, some nearside studs and nuts were left handed to counteract rotational forces.
Years ago, I was at the back of a line of traffic near Karlsruhe doing about 45ish when a US army truck coming the other way lost a split ring. The ring and outer rim hit a couple of cars, the tyre hit one and luckily bounced off to the side. Quite a bit of damage, but thankfully no one badly hurt, could have been a lot worse.
Yep, I remember the rule then from my father's 1947 Morris Commercial, 5 studs, RH threads on the right, LH threads on the left.
I don't know if it made any real difference.
Always imagined that if the nuts came loose, the counter direction thread might stop the nuts undoing enough to lose a wheel, but they fall off on the RH side as well, so that kinda kills that theory.
I've always greased my nuts (often against a faction of advice) and I've never lost a wheel due to the nuts coming undone. I also never crank them up with anything more than the Toyota supplied lever, using my foot and my silf-like body weight for the last 1/4 turn. (I've never bothered torquing them).
I have steel wheels and cone nuts and I grease the cones too.
This is just my way, so please don't copy me and come crying that I'm wrong, but it's never let me down.
I'm convinced that 90% of wheels are over tightened, we have 5 or 6 on our trucks, and there's no reason why they need to be at 200ft/lb as I've found them on other cars on many occasions.
The stress on a stud is huge when you use a long bar or high torque, and I can think of no other reason why studs would shear off other than over tightening, JMHO
