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MG MGA - Student requires 4 minutes

Hi, Im an engneering student and classic car owner, owning a B, midget and other things. Could you please spare 4 minutes filling out a survey for my Project assignment, any information is useful.

www.my3q.com/home2/184/rmspinner/48643.phtml

Cheers, Rob.
R Manley

Rob

Completed. I would be interested to know the thrust of your analysis. Perhaps you could share with us.

Steve
Steve Gyles

Done, but what is this info for?
Peter.
P. Tilbury

Interesting questions. Why the emphasis on wheels coming off!!?
David Marklew

Rob,

FYI mga twin cam and DeLuxe owners do not have wire wheels but have spinners not lug nuts.

Mark
M Gannon

A very strange combination of questions - has anyone here actually ever lost a wheel?
dominic clancy

Yes. But it wasn't entirely the car's fault. See here: http://www.mgnuts.com/tales/mga/wheelybadday/
Steve Simmons

I didn't fill it out. I'm still waiting for the originator to answer teh question, what's it for? I'm always suspicious of surveys, as they always have a vested purpose, but it's usually a hidden agenda. If you ignore the four questions in the middle about the wheels, it looks much more like a sales survey for security devices. Wild guess, no one on this BBS knows who this is, or if he is even a student. Just being pragmatic.
Barney Gaylord

My dad lost a front wheel on his Roadster. The knock-on threads suddenly let go while at speed. Luckily, when the wheel and car departed company, he was able to slow to a stop while running on the drum.

I nearly lost a rear wheel on my Coupe. Only one lug nut remained and it was on its way off. This was caused by a combination of aftermarket wheels and lug nuts that were slightly too long.
Kemper

I lost a front wheel at a stop sign once. The splines gave out when I applied the brakes. I had wondered what that ratcheting sound was when I stopped. The wheel rolled on down the road and narrowly missed a little old lady who was oblivious to my dilemna. Of course, with the front end sitting on the ground getting a jack under there to get a wheel back on was difficult but some kindly man had a very low profile jack that got me back on the road long enough to get to the nearby parking lot until I could return with my trailer. A new hub and wire wheel solved the problem.

Randy Myers
'59 roadster, coupe
Randy

Barney

My thoughts also (after having filled it in!). You look like a Myers-Brigg INTJ to me.

Steve
Steve Gyles

When I first got my car going I was pretty isolated and hadn't never talked to any one else who had even driven an MG. I had no idea you really had to wack those knock-off ears. A front wheel came loose at speed in the #-3 lane of the freeway. I negotiated traffic riding on the drum, but I never found the wheel. I just went home sadly singin that old country tune, "You picked a fine time to leave me loose-wheel."
Steve
Steve Meline

Funny, I had a front wheel snap off the car a few weeks ago. Climbing a steep hill at 50 mph, suddenly CLANG and the front end dropped to the pavement, shower of sparks and the wheel flew down the hill. Car slowed to a stop on the shoulder, lugnuts were STILL ON the hub. Wheel just cracked right off. Damn, only 50 years old and those steel disc wheels fail!
Jim P

Steve,
I used to be an INFJ; but that was back when I was a Democrat.
Steve
Steve Meline

"I had no idea you really had to wack those knock-off ears. A front wheel came loose at speed..."

Kinda disproves that silly "tighten as you drive" theory, doesn't it? ;)
Steve Simmons

But you don't have to really whack those knock-off ears. Instruction for the racing pit crew was "Two hits with the hammer and send him in his way". That's what self-tightening is all about. However, if you assemble the male splined hubs on the wrong side of the car they are guaranteed to unscrew and drop a wheel no matter how hard you whack it. I think the nominal expected failure distance for the wrong handed part may be less than 100 miles. See technical explanation of the self tightening knockoff here: http://mgaguru.com/mgtech/wheels/wl102.htm
Barney Gaylord

We have a Club member with an MGB with wires, and he lost all four spinners at the same time. He fitted "left" to left, and "right" to right.
But he was looking at the car from the front!!
Luckily he didn't do any damage, other than to his ego.
Peter.
P. Tilbury

I don't see how you can "accidentally" screw a left-handed nut onto a right-handed stud (or vice versa) without knowing something's wrong. How does this happen?
David Breneman

Reassembling the hubs and/or axle and reversing the sides.
Kemper

That is reversing the parts as a whole. I doubt even the most determined could thread a left-handed nut onto a right-handed stud.
Kemper

The "self tightening" theory is based on a perfect set of parts. Introduce a spoke imbalance, out of true wheel, out of balance wheel, imperfect bearing seat in the hub, or any number of other variables and the physics of the system no longer work the same way. Put a certain resonance into the wheel, and you can cause a spinner to come loose even when driving forward. It would be difficult if not impossible to intentionally cause this, but with infinite possible imperfections in the system, it can certainly happen on its own.

Always tighten your spinners properly!
Steve Simmons

Of all the people I know that own cars with wire wheels, only one has actually lost a wheel, and one had a wheel come loose. Both these persons have the very bad habit of tightening the wheel wing nuts with a lead hammer every now and then - "just to be sure".

What happens is of course that as years pass the inner wheel centre is gradually widened, and one day the wheel nut bottoms on the hub and can no longer hold the wheel centre really tight. At the same time the inner wheel spokes become too long and are loose, so the wheel is flexing, is no longer true and gradually comes out of balance...

So yes, tighten your spinners properly - bue leave it at that!

Tore
Tore

Oh yes - "bue" means the same thing as "but" :-)
Tore

Indeed! The other problem with over-tightening is that as the "cone" spreads, it no longer mates properly with the cone on the hub. Less contact area means less grip, which translates to more stress on the splines, more stress on the hub and possible wheel movement over the hub.

Tons of it in the archives, but I'll mention torque here anyway... I tighten my spinners with medium blows until the ear moves about 1/4" per blow. That's plenty tight.
Steve Simmons

Steve, your experience mirrors mine. If I ever encounter a "swishing" sound when driving, sure enough, one of the knockoffs needs a couple blows until they move very little with each blow.

BTW, in case anyone here is unfamiliar with the effect, it's the "orbital" motion of the wheel on the hub that's supposed to provide the tightening effect. Imagine putting a loop, say a roll of masking take, on your index finger and twirling it around. The part of the ring that rides on your finger displays "procession" as the astononers say, always moving forward, and the roll of tape slowly rotates as you twirl it.
David Breneman

Hehe, i can assure you that this is not a commercial thing and yes i may have a slight obsession with wheels falling off.

The purpose of this survey was to get a brief attitude of people towards their classics and leaning towards the safe maintenance of wire wheels and their spinners without going too deep with the questions.
Sadly I couldnt really say 'has a spinner come off whilst in motion' because that may bias the answer.

The reason i chose that paticular website is that it was free, no other reason.

Thanks for adding your vehicle, and its not especially 1 vehicle per owner. In a strange way it would be great to get a few more 'nut (as in spinner)/nuts loose / came off in motion' although i shouldnt really say that ;-)

So far i have had over 170 people take part and i can tell you that only 43% carry a suiatble fire extinguisher, tut tut.

If anyone wants to talk further i have added my e-mail.

Once again thanks again guys, i shal be removing the link on the 13th of Novebmer

Rob.
R Manley

David, I never have to tighten my spinners once they are set. I simply don't trust it to tighten itself rather than giving it a few more whacks with a hammer. I'm not a pit crew and I have the time to do it properly before driving the car!

it's disconcerning that your spinners work a bit loose. Is it all of them or just one? If one, I wonder if a spoke balancing and/or end float adjustment would solve the problem.
Steve Simmons

All three "A"s that I bought in the late '60s, though only about 10 years old, had lived hard lives. The knock-off spinners had repeatedly been put on the cars with steel hammers as evidenced by severe deformation on both sides of the ears. This over-tightening apparently deformed the threads as well, allowing the spinners to loosen instead of tighten as I drove. Eventually the looseness wore the splines on both the wheel and hub. On hard braking, the hub stopped turning but the wheel kept turning, until the spinner unscrewed and fell off. I never lost a wheel; in fact the wheel was very difficult to get off the hub after it had spun independently. I converted my car to bolt-on wheels with hubs and rear axle from a wrecked "A" and wheels from a Nash back in about 1970 when the "A" was my daily driver and parts availability wasn't as good as it is today.
k v morton

Hi, Steve - Mine haven't ever worked loose - sorry if I left that impression with my brief decription. The only time it's an issue is when a wheel has been removed and replaced. Sometimes, after driving 20-30 miles, I'll need to give it a couple taps to snug it up. I assume it's just a matter of it seating a little with use. Unlike some folks, I don't beat the hell out of the knockoffs because they're all new and I don't want to mar the wings! I've never had to do the same wheel twice.
David Breneman

I'm the same way. Double check them for safety's sake after a short drive.

I've found the "lead" hammers sold by moss and others to be an excellent tool. You can beat a spinner as hard as you like repeatedly and it doesn't leave a mark. When someone doesn't believe it, which is often, I always offer to let them hit a nice new spinner on my car as hard as they like. They always decline so I do it for them. When they finish cringing, they are amazed. :)
Steve Simmons

I have a hammer that's copper on one face and rawhide on the other. I'm pretty sure I got it from Moss also. I use the rawhide side and all the damage accumulates on the hammer not the knockoff. :-)
David Breneman

I have one of those and used to use them exclusively. I found that the copper did a great job but did damage the spinner over time. The rawhide did no damage and didn't require too much force, but they never lasted very long. The current Moss "lead" hammer doesn't last forever but I like it better than my old trusty copper / rawhides. Whenever Moss has their "free stuff" promotions, I stock up on hammers.
Steve Simmons

My spinner caps were so banged up when I got the car that I just use a steel 3-pound hammer. Does this mean I'm going to MGA hell?

Darian Henderson

Darian,

You might be! That was my experience, as I described above. The worse they get, the harder you have to hit them to get them off AND to keep them on. Eventually mine apparently distorted enough to allow the wheel to wobble on the hub, resulting finally in spline failure and a lost spinner.

Ken
k v morton

I use a plastic faced 4 pound hammer. The one pictured is a Snap-On Bluepoint brand. They are sold under many names.
The heavier hammer can be swung easier to get a good result without marring the spinner. Better than the lead hammer in the damage department


R J Brown

I'll keep that in mind, KV, but I don't whale on the things like some do. I just hit them until they start to move about 1/4" a whack.
Darian Henderson

I've been very happy with a "British wheel Wrench" I got from Moss some years back. No wackin at all. They still have them for the 'B' hex nuts but haven't sold them to fit the eared nuts for some time.
Steve
Steve Meline

I picked up one of the eared wrenches a while back. Unfortunately it digs into the chrome ear. I planned to try it with a rag over the spinner but I forgot about it long ago. I'll have to dig it out of the garage and try again.
Steve Simmons

That's what I do Steve, I always put like a shop rag between the wrench and the nut, takes care of that problem.
Steve
Steve Meline

This thread was discussed between 19/10/2007 and 04/11/2007

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