wheel keeps coming off

[bigfodee]

Im just drivin along, and i hear my wheel wobbling. I tighten the lugnuts and figure ok maybe I forgot to tighten them after I cleaned off my brakes yesterday. About 10 miles later, the wheel is loose again. The lug nuts are loose again to the point where I can finger tighten them. Im a little over a mile to my house so I tighten em and drive home. Two blocks from my house, I have to stop and tighten again. What the heck!!!?!?!! I had an alignment a few months ago. I was offroading on saturday and hear a few squeaky noises from that wheel/brakes on that corner, but have driven it about 200 miles since. Thats why I was trying to clean the brakes. I've done brakes before, but I did convert my girlfriend's ranger to manual hubs so if someone can help hopefully I can fix it myself.

[derf]

Im just drivin along, and i hear my wheel wobbling. I tighten the lugnuts and figure ok maybe I forgot to tighten them after I cleaned off my brakes yesterday. About 10 miles later, the wheel is loose again. The lug nuts are loose again to the point where I can finger tighten them. Im a little over a mile to my house so I tighten em and drive home. Two blocks from my house, I have to stop and tighten again. What the heck!!!?!?!! I had an alignment a few months ago. I was offroading on saturday and hear a few squeaky noises from that wheel/brakes on that corner, but have driven it about 200 miles since. Thats why I was trying to clean the brakes. I've done brakes before, but I did convert my girlfriend's ranger to manual hubs so if someone can help hopefully I can fix it myself.

Simple solution:

Tighten the lug nuts as much as you can with the wheel off the ground. Then lower the vehicle and tighen them some more.

The problem with tightening them with the wheel on the ground is that the weight of the vehicle on the wheel prevents the lug nuts from seating properly. When you start driving with loose nuts ( :eek: can I say that here?) your wheel will work lose faster than you can blink. This is incredibly dangerous and can cause serious damage to a lot of parts and/or cause catastrophic failure that results from the wheel coming off at highway speed. This is what's known as a "bad thing".

One thing you need to do before you tighten the wheel is to inspect the bolts for damage to the threads. You may need to replace the bolts if they are damaged.

[bigfodee]

Boo-hoo, woe is me. ok I got a chance to look at the hub in the daylight. My first sign of anguish was when I was taking the wheel off and say grey on my normally rust colored studs. I think that rim is shot. It looks like the holes were bored out. The rotor will have about a half inch of play if you wiggle it opposite the brakes. The cover thingy ( I think thats the technical term) that moves with the rotor also has bored out holes around the studs, or lugs or whatever you call em. The (spindle?) nut does not move when I wiggle anything. The studs do not move outside their normally circular direction - no up or down, or in or out. If I could get the brakes and 'cover' off, i could probably get a whole lot better view, but as I said I dont know how to remove them so if anyone has a writeup it would be much appreciated. Any ideas from the limited information?