Grey nomads Stuart and Helen Ward still shudder at the memory of just how close they came to paying a very heavy price for a moment of lost concentration when changing a caravan wheel.
The Victorian couple were towing their single axle poptop in Western Australia when they noticed the tyre on the nearside was starting to delaminate. They quickly decided to make use of the spare van wheel which was attached underneath the chassis with a cable system rather than with nuts.
“We replaced the wheel with the spare with the help of a friend,” said Stuart. “And during that operation, what with talking and laughing, I probably forgot to tighten the wheel nuts sufficiently when the wheel was grounded.”
What happened next was inevitable.
“We had only driven three or four kilometres when the nearside wheel parted company with the van,” said Stuart. “Luckily though, neither the van nor our Prado overturned and it appeared no damage was sustained to either vehicle.”
After recovering from the shock, and reassuring themselves that they were okay, the couple retrieved the runaway wheel but only managed to locate two of the wheel’s six nuts. They took two nuts off their van’s ‘good’ wheel to put on the ‘bad’ wheel so there were four nuts on each wheel and they then limped to a local mechanic who gave them some new nuts free of charge.
Stuart and Helen then had their vehicles and tyres thoroughly checked over to ensure there had been no damage, and then took off on the rest of their journey a little shaken … and a lot wiser.
“We certainly learned some lessons as a result of this mishap including that, while accepting help from friends, don’t forget the small jobs and go through a check process,” said Stuart. “And get a complete set of wheel nuts for your tow vehicle and van … they are cheap and easy to store but will give peace of mind.”
The couple also urged other travellers to check their motoring organisation cover. Although they were in the top cover of RACV roadside assist, they said the RACWA was not interested in helping them as their issue was not ‘mechanical’.
“As our problem was caused by my negligence in not doing the nuts up tight enough they had no intention of helping us,” said Stuart. “They did acknowledge that they help motorists if they run out of fuel but surely this would also be considered a negligence problem not mechanical.”
Interesting to hear what viewpoint Your roadside care People have ? Good to see You all okay. Agree with all You say.
We lost a caravan wheel, the wheel nuts had sheared off. Seems these wheels must be torqued properly. Now we carry a torquing wrench and check the wheels every three to five hundred kilometres.
got racq out for a flat tyre recently…. very helpful.
in fact averted another prob as the tyre had a couple of sharp screws in it that caused the prob.
Racq then checked the other wheels and sure enough one of them also had a screw in it and was slowly going down… i would never have thought to check the other wheels and am so grateful.
would really liketo hear racq response as we are headed there soon.
RACQ refused to come to our rescue when we lost nuts on our campervan pop top roof and couldn’t close it on a trip to Queensland. We had full cover with NRMA in NSW and when we returned I queried them as to what was the purpose of full cover as it didn’t help us in an emergency. They advised that I should have called them back (NRMA) and they would have organised a private operator to attend and fix the problem under the cover I had. Of course I wasn’t aware of this and certainly will do that in the future if the need arises. Different motoring organisations have different policies but I was pleased that my cover with NRMA was good even though unaware of it at the time!
If this happens its probably not a bad idea to also replace the wheel studs as well. They will have been fatigued as the wheel wobbled around.