I think that this happened to me, btu I am not sure. I was hearing a lot of noise o nthe way to work. Everything looked fine, but I am missing one lugnut. Got out the wrhench in the parking garage to check the front wheels on the inside for bubbles or debris and I noticed that the wheel that was missing one lug nut had the other 4 lugs very loose.

Other rims were all fine when I checked them for tightness.

 

Not sure about them loosening, but I have one missing lugnut, I just made sure it is on one of the back rims. Meant to change it but never got around to it. Everything has been fine for a year now.

 

no.. i am running on 3 lug studs right now for about 3 months and they havn't come loose

 

Ditto, had to run with a missing lug for a while and no problems

 

Odd, because they were DEFINATELY loose...maybe I forgot to tighten them all of the way. Weird...

 

Perhaps that wheel is vibrating more than normal for reasons other than the missing lug nut, and that is what loosened them.

BTW I have left lugnuts loose that I would swear on the bible I had torqued down. there is no doubt in my mind that I had torqued them down, and yet I have come to find them loose on certain occasions. those lugnuts are crafty little buggers.

 

3 entire month on 3 stud!!
WTF, they cost not that much!!

Some people like to take chance that nobody would!!


Yes they can come looser cause your wheel is a bit unbalanced with a missing lug!! Small vibration occur and if other aren't tigh enough they could loose a bit!!

 

stop!!! with!!! all!!! the!!!! !!!!!

 

i ran with 3 lug nuts before, but there were some small vibrations.

what i would do is tighen those 4 lug nuts with a torque wrench to spec, and check again couple days later. if it's not losen then it should be fine, but if it is i suggest hammer out the stud, and replace a new stud along with a new lug nut. new stud at dealership is about $5 i believe.

 

Running with one lug nut, while not ideal, shouldn't cause any real problems with either vibration or with loosening any of the other 4 lugnuts.

Running with two or more lugnuts missing, i.e. with 3 or less lug studs intact, is not a good idea. This wil lead to imbalance of the wheel while rotating and would put a LOT of strain the other remaining studs. The less studs you have intact, the more strain it puts on those that are left. Of course, the pattern of the remaining studs will affect how bad it is - having two right next to each other missing would be worse than having two studs positioned across from each other missing.

Having only 2 lug studs would cause them to break and your wheel to fall off sooner or later. This actually happened to a car in front of me on the road a couple years ago - An old junker Mercury's wheel popped off, his car left debris in the road right in front of me, I ran over some of it and popped a tire. I immdiately went back to where he had stopped and sure enough, 3 of his 5 wheel studs were broken and rusted on the end, while the other 2 were freshly broken off - hmmm, didn't take me long to figure out what happened.

 

Both of my front wheels got 4 lugs. One of 'ems been like that for about 7months. Our Studs are a pain in th *** to replace btw, I snapped it off from overtightening it