Wheel Fell Off
I thought it worth posting an incident that happened last week on our return from Haycraft in Dorset. We had been travelling for approximately 1 hour when the nearside wheel on our 2011 Swift Charisma fell off. All of the bolts had undone and only 3 could
later be found. Fortunately we were only travelling at 35mph on a dual carraigeway and were able to stop fairly quickly but not before some serious damage had been done to the wheel arch and side skin of the caravan. Even more fortunately the wheel went down
a side road out of the main run of traffic and no injuries resulted. This raises a few of points:
1) There are recommendations on torquing up the wheel nuts regularly in the handbook. Having had the incident I believe this should be before every journey. How many members are aware of this & actually do it? Note that over-torquing can also be an issue,
2) The wheel most likely to fall off is the nearside wheel as the nuts will naturally undo in the direction of rotation.
3) The loss of a wheel at higher speeds could be a danger to lives of those in the towing vehicle and to others on the road and so this is a serious issue
4) How many times do car wheels fall off - I have never checked the wheel nuts on my cars and drive in excess of 20000 miles per year, and yet the wheel on my caravan fell off 300 miles after it's service when the nuts were torqued up in my presence?
5) A google search reveals a number of these incidents. This is clearly something that needs to be addressed by the caravan manufacturers, and could be designed out (e.g. nearside nuts being the opposite thread).
6) Apparantly the issue is much more common with alloy wheels due to the differential expansion of the alloy compared to the steel brake hub.
Being a relative newcomer to caravanning ( 4 years) no-one has stressed how important this is. This could have been done when the caravan was serviced or signs & warnings could be at every caravan site entrance.
If you have had a similar experience please let me know.
Thanks.