Technology — Wheel Physics

We hear this all the time, a friend installed a set of wheel spacer and while cruising on the highway, the wheel let go.  Terrible thing!  We all blame it on the wheel spacer but is it really the wheel spacer? Let’s take a moment to talk about what keeps the wheel on. The wheel studs on a car acts as a clamping force that holds the wheel to the hub.  When we go to tighten the lug nuts, the wheel studs act like a spring providing elastic force to hold the wheel on properly. The specific torque spec for...