Just a reminder, and not wanting to teach anyone to suck eggs:

If you are changing your wheels DO NOT put any grease on the wheel to hub mating face. You can put some on the "Mounting Bored" to stop the wheel sticking.

From the manual:

On alloy wheels, use an approved anti-seize compound to treat the wheel mounting bore. This will minimise any tendency for adhesion between the wheel and the bore.
Ensure that no compound comes into contact with the brake components or the flat mounting surfaces of the wheel.

The reason behind this is that the job of the wheel nuts is to hold the wheel super tight against the hub, not to take any "sheering" force themselves.

Dan 

Sorry Dan, lost me there - what shear forces would these be? Could you expand on this please?

dantheman wrote:

Sorry Dan, lost me there - what shear forces would these be? Could you expand on this please?

Dan means the rotational shear forces. Wheel lugs are designed to work more under compression then shear - and Dan is absolutely correct in stating that it is mainly friction between the flange and the wheel that keep the wheel from rotating on the flange under hard acceleration or heavy braking. The lugs are simply the clamp.

The same goes for the mounting face of the rotor hat on the wheel hub, BTW, which is why properly mounted rotors will often cause the problems that Dan is having: they stick due to corrosion.

Only the spigot/bore should receive anti-seize. 
RRC 2Dr, RRC 4Dr,
P38, and 2 L322s
(wife thinks I'm nuts - prob right, too)

Last edited by SteveMFr on 4th Jun 2010 7:43am. Edited 1 time in total

Must - practice - quicker - typing  
RRC 2Dr, RRC 4Dr,
P38, and 2 L322s
(wife thinks I'm nuts - prob right, too)

That was a good tip.

Never noticed it in the manual and have been greasing them for the last five years.

Funny how the grease was never cleaned off by the Dealer or independant during services and no mention on collection.

Guess I will be having the wheels off this weekend.

Ian

hi, thanks dan, like me i did use greese, i was told this years ago to stop alloy wheels sticking to the hub but will be cleaning it off asap... V8 facelift Range Rover Autobiography 22" wheels.
1976 Harley Davidson Iron Head Sportster

Right: I see where you're going with this now.

To be honest, a little copperslip or anti-seize compound between the mating face of the alloy wheel and housing cause no harm at all and will not subject your wheelnuts to unwanted sheer forces if they are torqued up correctly. This actually serves to prevent bonding of dissimilar metals. The countersunk shoulders between wheels and nuts actually hold the wheels in place.

You may cause wheelnuts to shear if they are overtightened however, as this weakens them due to being stessed beyond their limit of elasticity, into their plasticity region where they are unable to recover their shape and ultimately their tensile strength. In this respect, things tend to go "snap" in this plasticity region toward their ultimate tensile strength (UTS).

Have a look at the following link where tensile strength is explained with regard to mechanical testing: http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/courses/Webcourse-...ture11.htm

Hope this goes a little way toward explaining what I'm trying to get at.

I am mystified, if this is so then why is there a stepped / taper on the wheel nuts, its existence will simply transfer the torque directly from the wheel rim onto the hub studs. The shearing force of a vehicle under heavy breaking cannot be retained simply by the friction between two surfaces clamped together.

i.e. a FFRR weighs near enough 3 tonnes, plus the weight of a twin or triple axle trailer of 3500kg = all up weight of 6.5 tonnes near enough, all this inertia is placed directly onto the wheels to bring it to a stop under breaking, and before anybody says a trailer has its own breaks, yes this is correct, but with overrun breaks they do not come into effect until the vehicle is breaking first. The studs must therefore take the majority of the load / shear force with the spigot - unless I have totally missed the point???

i.e. similar to the purpose of the pin in a clevis hitch

since 1973 we have always applied copper slip between the hub and wheel rim and never had a problem on LR's, RR's or tractors etc.

Yes - the sunk shoulders locate the wheel centrally to the stud/nut. Don't forget the purchase that the threads give along their pitch additionally. The nuts/studs have to "pull" against something for want of a better word: if you were to unravel a screw thread consider the area in contact with the nut/hole thread.

As for the hold the nuts give, look at a cylinder head. As each head bolt is tightened, in a set sequence, this allows even distribution of clamping force around the area of the head around each bolt.

You could equate using grease on the mating face to driving with loose wheel nuts. It puts strain on the studs in a direction that they are not designed to have.

Without wanting to sound pretentious, I wasn't asking for opinions, I was stating fact.

Read the manual, read the many articles online about it, or use logic. 

Dan: certainly not implying anything pretentious - or indeed offering merely an opinion. This information is factual, backed up by my experience firstly as an experienced Army Mechanical Engineer and then an Artificer (further studying engineering design, application, materials and metallurgy, science etc).

I have worked on equipment right across the spectrum, from generators, to cars, to Land rovers, to trucks of various types and beyond to pretty much all the Army's armoured fighting vehicles and tanks - in pretty much any climate or environment you may care to mention.

As for reading the manual - or applying logic: in all my time under tuition on numerous equipment courses attended, and technical publications I have used in the past 18 years, never have I seen or heard any warning referring to this issue. As I said previously, copperslip and various jointing compounds are intended for this very purpose - and to prevent the fusion of dissimilar metals in such a situation. If nuts are torqued up correctly, there is no possibility of movement between the wheel and hub. Bear in mind that wheel security should be checked on a regular basis!

dantheman wrote:

If nuts are torqued up correctly, there is no possibility of movement between the wheel and hub.

Wheel nut and bolts are designed to be tightened up to a specific torque based on both contact surfaces being clean and dry, so by throwing a lubricant into this equation the factory torque value is then too low. You can then of course up the torque to compensate, but then risk stretching the bolts and then having them fail from that.

Stuff from tinternet:

The joint face between the wheel and hub should remain dry - this face is, effectively, a clutch face transmitting drive and braking torque between the hub and wheel. This torque should be transmitted by the friction, and not by shearing the bolts. 

I can see the point you're trying to make Dan, but to be fair, a thin coat of copperslip is not going to have a nugatory effect on a given torque value for wheel nuts. The same clamping force would be acting between wheel and hub face, meaning there is no need to increase the torque setting.

Shear force is not even a concern here. The hub face does not act as a clutch face as such by the way, if this was so the result would be a hot wheel hub under constant accelerating and braking. These faces don't move in relation to one another, and therefore there is no friction, and no clutch effect.

Not everything you read on the internet is true.