I've seen this before; Are the lug nuts tapered or are the the shoulder type on the shouldered type? You can have a problem of the lugs bottoming on the stud...............the wheel is on there and the lugs tighten up to the proper torque BUT there is a couple of thou clearance...........the wheel feels tight but isnt. It only takes about 30 ft at speed for all the lugs to spin off. I caught this on my 1200 when using a differant set of rims, something just didn't seem right when I lowered the car off the jack........pulled out of the garage to put the car on the trailer , just happened to check the lugs....sure enough they were loose already.

Tom

i have had wheels fall off be for..
1. only had 3 nut on a 4 stud rim and it ripped off the nuts but the thread on the bolts was ok ish
maybe your nuts where worn out ??
2. had a wheel fall off dew too the nuts comin off lol it made a lot off noise before it came off

Quote:Bad idea. I can easily get 100 lb.ft. torque with the short 1200 iron, with a cross-style wheelbrace I could probably get 150 lb. ft. - but the Nissan specification is only 60 lb. ft. (8.0-9.0 kg-m).

What you want is:
* Even tightening (all four lugs at the same torque)
* Tighten in star pattern

They don't have to be super tight, just 40 ft/lb's would be about right. I don't understand how all 4 nuts came off with no warning, that's odd. Seems like there's more to this.

Yea it is wierd, i did them up as tight as i could with a wheelbrace with the car on the ground then got straight in and drove off. There were no noises/ vibrations before it fell off either. All four wheelnuts and studs are perfect still, they are the long type that screw into the rim eg, there is a large gap between the studs and actual wheel. It was on main north road coming up to regency road. Im still going to blame the spacer, may have even cracked it doing it up?

How bloody tight were they?

I have some of those very same dodgy spacers on the front wheels of my car. Sure they're cast aluminum from china, but I don't worry about them ever. Use of different lug nuts can have very signifignat consequences. My 280zx turbo wheels needed a 3/8" spacer, kinda thick, and I still relieved the wheel a little to clear the caliper. But what I discovered was the OEM lugnuts - special ones for OEM mag wheels my studs were too short to have enough threads to be safe, about 9 turns I think is the minimum you wanted, i got like 7? anyways... got some aftermarket mag wheel lugs and they were threaded all the way down, adding like 4 more turns getting me a bit more comfortably into the safe to use area.

I wonder if there was very little thread engaged and it pulled the thread out of the bolt or the lug. that could cause a simultaneous failure of several or all the nuts, and have everything look ok.

I could be wrong, but I get strange exotic failures of things so I'm used to finding out why things went bad.

tis a bit weird isnt it, as even if the spacer broke off and departed the vehicle, the wheel nuts would sorta come off slowly and the wheel would vibrate like a bitch

and you wouldnt think that all the wheel nuts would be together

hey... if the lug nuts were sitting there undamaged... meaning they didn't shear the studs, then there was something strange going on, all 4 lugnuts generally don't fall off, were the right ones used? what condition are the lug studs in? did you have 9+ threads engaged on the studs? something funny going on here...
when were they last torqued?

what road were you on ?

Crikey, I'm glad to hear you are OK and that no one was hurt.

Wheel spacers are not illegal in the USA, and I have heard of no accidents from them.

The most common reason for wheels to come off from what I understand is overtightening of the lugnuts. There is a very low torque specification on 1200 lugnuts. This will happen suddenly and with or without use of spacer. But it is still rare.

Lugnuts too loose can back off -- but they should give a warning of vibrations etc for a while before it happens?