<VV> Loose axle

[Byron LaMotte]

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> 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.
> >
>
>

-- 
Byron (Brud) LaMotte
South Wind
4501 World Farm Rd.
Oxford, Md. 21654
410-924-1311 cell