Thread: TerraFirma Wheels Bead Lock broken bolts

Lots of advantages and disadvantages .

If you are running pressures low enough to need them you will already be considering bead engagement.

Have ran a few different ones and need to be vigilant with checking bolts.

Now my dilemma is to fit second airs or weld a kit to my eastern wheel works.

I would run 12.9 instead of 8.8 bolts

Originally Posted by weeds

Is there actually nuts?

I l’m lost how you would assemble with nuts, although I have no experience with Bead Locks.

Yes there are. See this pic from another Defender2.net:

2015-05-27 10.19.03.jpg

From this pic from Defender2.net and a description of the wheel on Terra Firma's site, it seems the outer can be a dress rim or a bead lock, depending on how the tyre is fitted:

a1c8a134d37fe0a92d9671bf200661a8954fb3899b96ba473297133556f4478b.jpg

Terrafirma Lock rings and bolt kit | Wheels - Alloy Wheels Accessories for Land Rover Vehicles

I'm not sure if the rings on the 6x6 are fitted as bead locks or not. They look like it.

I would assume the bottom photo is drilled and tapped , the tyre can go inside ( traditional) or outside. If outside the top photo locking ring is placed over the tyre and the bolts pass through the ring and into the threaded holes. No nuts.
Then I just zoomed in on the photo ,
But I don’t know how the top photo can work

Originally Posted by p38arover

Yes there are. See this pic from another Defender2.net:

2015-05-27 10.19.03.jpg

From this pic from Defender2.net and a description of the wheel on Terra Firma's site, it seems the outer can be a dress rim or a bead lock, depending on how the tyre is fitted:

a1c8a134d37fe0a92d9671bf200661a8954fb3899b96ba473297133556f4478b.jpg

Terrafirma Lock rings and bolt kit | Wheels - Alloy Wheels Accessories for Land Rover Vehicles

I'm not sure if the rings on the 6x6 are fitted as bead locks or not. They look like it.

Thanks for that, now I see.....what a bugger of a job doing up bolt and nut.

To put all guessing to rest and to answer a few questions:

You still need to push one tyre bead over the rim since indeed you can run these with or without the beadlock kit. Only having to do one side of the tyre makes it a lot easier though but on the other hand, it turns my 7j rim into something like a 7.5. Since I run 235 tyres my rim has become slightly wide for the tyre. Also, they are nuts and bolts. There are holes in the wheel and ring. Fitting them is on the one hand relatively easy but even when you are of by 1mm the tyre will not sit straight on the rim and you get a wheel that is out of whack This is the main reason I had my tyres "shaved" on a lathe to get them perfectly round again and get rid of massive wobbling from around 80kph and up. Also, torquing the bolts/nuts as I already mentioned is one hell of a job. I am not sure if there are any shops that will actually mount tyres on beadlocks since the extra time and effort is pretty big. I would suspect there to be a massive increase in costs associated with that. To put this into perspective; I have worked in a tyre shop when I was young so I actually know quite a bit about that kind of work and I could change tyres on a standard vehicle in 30 minutes, all done. It takes me about 45 at best to do one beadlock wheel... Admittedly, I am still finding my way around them and a shop that does a lot of them could be quicker, but still...

Re how to mount the nuts: the outside rim bead bed (not sure how that is called :P) actually "folds over" back to the inside of the wheel. It is about as thick if not a bit thicker than the rim itself and there is a space between the inside of the rim and the folded back bead bed. The gap that is created is big enough to fit a nylock nut into (and a pair of fingers, provided they are not to big). YOu just stick a wrench in there over the nut and torque the bolt from the top, that's it. A lot more work this way then having a threaded bead bed but this way you can have a sheared bolt, screwed up thread on the nut, whatever without having to go through serious trouble fixing the rim back up, just toss away the garbage and pick a new bolt and nut.

Indeed alloy and ss will react (electrolysis) but since I do not thread them into the alloy it is going to be ok. I do use mounting paste on almost every other part of my car but the holes in the rims fill up with sand and stuff so there is not much use in applying it there.

Having said that, I can run 5psi under difficult circumstances and I have never lost a bead yet.

Retorque every 200 miles is a lot of work I do check the bolts regularly like I check most things on the vehicle but I never tested them with a torque wrench. I might consider doing that for a while to see if I can find correlation / reason for the bolts shearing.

Back to the OP's original problem (and mine as it turns out)
I can not imagine the bolts having sheered due to sideways load, ie the ring shifting in relation to the rim perhaps due to rotation (slipping) of the tyre. As far as I can tell it's pure vertical force that is the culprit here. That in turn makes me wonder how this could happen when bolts are properly torqued. Torquing is done when the tyre is empty and only pressurized afterwards. I find it hard to believe though that the relatively small amount of pressure we put in our tyres, divided over 26 bolts would cause them to snap. Perhaps heating and cooling plays a part. I have used my wheels for over a year before I noticed the problem and I had also not run low pressures on the tarmac before I noticed the problem. ie. I ran low pressures on mud at low speeds but always aired up when returning to tarmac. A month or so ago though, I did a track through the morvan in france which involved short sections of windy tarmac (5k's at most usually) at relatively low speeds (60kph at most) in which I did not air up again. It was only after this trip I started having bolts sheer of. Perhaps there is a relation.

Cheers,
-P

Originally Posted by prelude

but I did notice whilst replacing the bolts with the SS ones some of them were

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Originally Posted by Lockee

I would run 12.9 instead of 8.8 bolts

The problem might be fatigue instead of strength, if so going higher grade bolt may not help that much

Pic of failure due to strength or lack there of
0117-WE-Fig1.jpg

Pic of failure from fatigue

1-s2.0-S2213290215000164-gr2.jpg

Although I suppose the only practical way to find out is to change them as see what happens.

Cheers Glen

Judging by the pictures I would go with fatigue in my case. I'll see if I can dig on of the old bolts up to check. Fatigue would suggest that they are potentially over torqued? I guess that when the wheel rotates different pressure is applied (certainly in corners) on the bolt as the sidewall flexes placing a different load on the bead-ring... just a thought for now. Else it could be the many heating and cooling cycles of the wheels varying the force on the bolts. Still over torquing I would guess.

I use a similar mounting paste over here, one that is also usuable up to 1200c. I have my entire care put together with that stuff Only thing is, lock-tite and that paste are mutually exclusive

Cheers,

-P

Originally Posted by prelude

Judging by the pictures I would go with fatigue in my case. I'll see if I can dig on of the old bolts up to check. Fatigue would suggest that they are potentially over torqued? I guess that when the wheel rotates different pressure is applied (certainly in corners) on the bolt as the sidewall flexes placing a different load on the bead-ring... just a thought for now. Else it could be the many heating and cooling cycles of the wheels varying the force on the bolts. Still over torquing I would guess.
-P

Apologies, missed the reply.
Those are my thoughts as well, if they are torqued up to their yield strength any further stress will start the fatigue cycle. There is a bit of yin&yan about higher strength bolts. You can gain some margin because the bolt has a higher yield strength but the down side is once it goes pas this point it will fatigue a lot quicker.

Cheers Glen