Delica Canada | Mitsubishi Van Club

I was in Whistler last week and coming back on the freeway just before Taylor way the 5 people in the back noticed a strange sound coming from the rear passenger side wheel. One friend thought it was a flat but I could feel nothing wrong. I pulled over in a parking lot on Taylor way to investigate. I checked the tire then I checked if a rock was rattling in the rim. Nothing.

I drove about 10 meters and the sound was still there. I got out again thinking maybe it was the lugs. 3 counter clockwise twists by hand and the lug came off. This was the case with every single lug on my wheel.

Realizing that despite working on my vehicle at home I had no idea where the jack was I called BCAA. When they arrived 45 minutes later the guy took one look at it and asked me if I'd had someone take the wheels off recently. I had had new tires put on at Costco and the rear brake shoe kit done by Werner's auto Klinik shortly after that (simple answer being yes). It had been almost 2000km however since the last removal of the rear tires.

I was told to raise hell with whoever had put them back on because they shouldn't have come loose like that, obviously. Once the wheel had been tightened and the holidays were over I took the Deli back in and had Werner look at it. He showed me how the wheels were tightened and how it was impossible for them to come off without some help. I was also told that if my wheels had been loosened before the trip there was no way I would have been able to make it to Whistler and back without the wheel falling off.

This left one reason for my predicament. Someone had loosened / tried to steal my wheel while I was in whistler. The only places I had parked had been the busy Market Place parking lot, the mountain parking lot (right beside the ticket box) and the hostel parking lot where I slept in the van. This meant that someone had either loosened the lugs while I was sleeping in it or in broad daylight with people mulling around.

The gist of this long and most likely boring story is to caution those with new tires and/or expensive rims that thieves are extremely thrifty and have no care at all for your safety.

I do now have a jack and t-bar in my van and feel extremely stupid for not being well equainted enough with my van to know that I did not have these tools.

Many shops just use an air gun to put the lug nuts back on. This is not the proper way for most alloy rims (it works fine for steel rims).

Lug nuts should always be torqued on with a torque wrench. 100-110ft lbs for the Delica.

Lug nuts have a way of loosening themselves unless they've been gunned on and then torqued for the final turns.

Glad you're safe.

I had a Mazda B2200 pickup truck years ago and was driving on the highway through Nanaimo. Earlier that day I had a shop rotate the tires. I didn't pay attention to how they did it or what they did. Turns out they didn't torque the nuts down.

My front left complete wheel flew off while I was doing 100 km/hr and the whole front end dropped down on the rotor causing sparks to shoot up beside my window. Luckily, there were no oncoming cars as the bouncing wheel went over into the oncoming lanes. I ground to halt and so did my 1/2 eaten rotor. I was pissed off. Long story short, I was okay, no other vehicles were hurt and I got that shop to fix everything including a new pair of pants for me.

That was my first assumption but every vehicle that goes through Werner's has the lugs tightened with a torque wrench. He said 96ft/lbs though. Could this be the reason? Also, like I said I drove on it quite a bit before the wheel came off.

Well I'm glad to hear that you're still with us after that incident! My cousin had almost the same thing happen to him also although in his case it was someone trying to steel the front wheels (both had been loosened by an Indian guy and the neighbour saw it happening but couldn't get down in time to warn him). The wheel came off just after passing through the Massey tunnel travelling at 110km/h and almost made it to the Sikh temple. I'm not trying to be racist I just though it was ironic. There was a car driving beside him at the time and he was in a front wheel drive car. Luckily the guy beside him was paying attention and swerved out of the way.

The opposite happened to my dad where the wheels had been put on wrong my the toyota dealer and the two front wheels locked sending him into a 4 wheel drive skid up near SFU. I've also noticed many of these issues originating from Crappy Tire.

Seems like these stories are all too common.

You should re-torque wheels after 100km-ish after a change. I always check mine again after some road miles.

I check the torque once a month on Gumdrop's wheel nuts, and always after any wheel/tire-related maintenance. Like pre-flight inspections before I go flying, I do it as if my life depended on it. Because it does.

Steel wheels have a natural springiness to them, and once torqued, tend to stay that way. Alloy wheels do not have this springiness, and you need to check them periodically. A torque wrench plus the right size socket is cheap peace of mind. Mine is a nice one from Sears, but a cheaper Canadian Tire/Princess Auto torque wrench will do just as well.

...laura

Good to know. I never had a problem with my civic (the only other vehicle I've owned). I just hand tightened everything after changing it and drove until I needed new tires. 259,000km on the original clutch with the original brakes, original shocks, etc. Amazingly I managed to sell it for $1300 after it had been 'totalled' Frame needed pulling, hood, bumper, quarter panel and driver side door needed replacing, strut was bent, rotor was kaput, shocks were even worse than before the crash, dash board was cracked and door surround trim, seat belt and release mechanisms were gone too.

Again with another of my rants but what I'm trying to say is that it's quite the transition between vehicles and I really appreciate all your input and advice!

Another point to be made is that this 'loosening' only happened on the one wheel, the others were exactly 95lbs/ft when tested, the same as when they left the shop.

My rear wheel came about half way off before i managed to stop... turns out a shop forgot to torque them properly. I had my daughter in the van too, scary stuff. I check my wheels once a month now too. Two wheels on the same side were both hand tight, the other side was torqued.

Excellent, I have now found my jack. Thank you very much Falco. I do have the proper tire iron. As it does not tell me ft.lbs should I tighten them as I would have with my civic, until I feel enough resistance that I can't easily tighten further? I will buy a torque wrench in the future but don't have a large income at the moment seeing as I work at a ski shop that is running out of supply and won't finish school / start my next job for 2 months.

I will make sure that they up the ft.lbs from 95 to 100 (I'm positive that all were done to 95 as I did look over their shoulder for that task.

nxski wrote:As it does not tell me ft.lbs should I tighten them as I would have with my civic, until I feel enough resistance that I can't easily tighten further?

Hand tightening doesn't give you any indication who tight the nuts really are. Either it's too loose or your are close to shearing off.

The l300 shop manual recommends 88 - 103lbs/ft. for steel rims

Torque them every few tank stops or even more often if you go offroad a lot. Speaking from experience, wheels are coming off sooner than you would think

nxski wrote:Excellent, I have now found my jack. Thank you very much Falco. I do have the proper tire iron. As it does not tell me ft.lbs should I tighten them as I would have with my civic, until I feel enough resistance that I can't easily tighten further? I will buy a torque wrench in the future but don't have a large income at the moment seeing as I work at a ski shop that is running out of supply and won't finish school / start my next job for 2 months.

I will make sure that they up the ft.lbs from 95 to 100 (I'm positive that all were done to 95 as I did look over their shoulder for that task.

You can get a torque wrench for as little as $30 at KMS. I would not use a $30 torque wrench for tightening my head as that must be very accurate. But for tightening lug nuts it doesn't really matter if it's to the exact Nm, just so long as they are equal to each other and more or less 100 ft. lbs. (140 Nm), as Fexlboi has pointed out. Once you've tighten your nuts with a torque wrench you get the feel for the tightness and remember ~ criss-cross patern.

Falco.