Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

I have two questions:

1. Is it useful to safety wire the knock off spinners on my 26r wheels/hubs? For racing this seems to be done quite often (required?). Any history of 26r knockoffs actually loosening/falling off? Hard for me to see the robust 26r wheel pegs failing and allowing relative wheel/hub movement which seems to be at the root of failure with non-26r K/O spinners unwinding.

2. Which direction should the wiring be done? Normally, I would think safety wire should be in the direction of tightening. But, looking at a number of 26r setups it appears the wiring is done both ways:

Jay Leno's "26r" front right (wired to loosen):


Another 26r where the front right is wired to tighten:


These are just two examples, neither of which are outliers. There are a number of examples done both ways. Even Leno's same car shows a tightening orientation (ccw) for the left rear spinner:



So, there is no consistency in orientation (tightening vs loosening direction).

From another site: http://vintagewheelsus.com/index.php?ma ... page&id=18

"Ensure that the safety wire is "pulling" in the same direction as the spinner is tightened ."

(Also, note that the left/right spinner/hub directions on other cars are reversed to the Lotus (as has been oft discussed), if that has any bearing on the safety wiring).

A large number of the race cars I see now have the hubs the other way around . Normally in an Elan the top of the spinner goes to the front of the car to tighten. Many reverse the hub, the same direction of tightening to most other spinner cars. Plenty of threads on this.
I've set mine up in standard direction, as per Colin Chapman, as per Tony Thompson. TT says they never come loose unless they've been tightened wrongly...?....
Most others I've spoken with will tell stories of loose wheels, but mainly rears.

I'm going to use through the hub locking clips for the rears and 'put the fronts on properly' and see what happens.

Oneowner: In the past two years and 5000 (?) miles of having 26R hubs/wheels fastening I have not had a problem with wheels loosening on the road-and this includes rough road/gravel use. In fact after last weekends 1000 mile jaunt I had to really whack the knock-offs to loosen them! If was going to use safety wire I would have it leading forward so that the wire is tightening the knock-off. Pointless otherwise innit?

Using lockwire on K/O hubs on vintage race cars is required by the rules. If the K/Os are tightened properly, there is no need for lockwire. I would not under any circumstances call this "safety wire". If the K/O were to back off, the wire won't help. I have seen 2MM wire spring clips sheared off when a wheel came loose.

If the knock-off is safety wired correctly the knock-off cannot back off--of course, if you leave the wire slack...

I finally started racing in my Elan this year and had quite a few problems with the knock on wheels coming loose, particularly the rears. I started of using a spinner tool and a torque wrench but during practice at Thruxton the wheels came loose 3 times, this was with lock wire. Talking to the experts the recommendation was a hammer gives a better grip than using a torgue wrench so that is what i use now. I have also had extended aluminium nuts made, one for each wheel to replace the drive peg nuts ,these are long enough to extend to the spinners so that if they work loose the spinner can a only turn as far as the extended nut, (idea pinched from others) this worked at Croft where one wheel loosened. Still use tie wire as well, always tied so against the direction of undoing.

Regards

Andy

batfish wrote:I finally started racing in my Elan this year and had quite a few problems with the knock on wheels coming loose, particularly the rears. I started of using a spinner tool and a torque wrench but during practice at Thruxton the wheels came loose 3 times, this was with lock wire. Talking to the experts the recommendation was a hammer gives a better grip than using a torgue wrench so that is what i use now. I have also had extended aluminium nuts made, one for each wheel to replace the drive peg nuts ,these are long enough to extend to the spinners so that if they work loose the spinner can a only turn as far as the extended nut, (idea pinched from others) this worked at Croft where one wheel loosened. Still use tie wire as well, always tied so against the direction of undoing.

Regards

Andy

Hi Andy,
Which side have the put the hubs on ?

Hi

The hubs are on as per Lotus design

Andy

Do you have a picture of your extended nut installation? Might try to replicate.

What torque level were you using with the spinner tool, that still resulted in the wheel loosening?

I assume you had 26r hubs and wheels?

I will take a photo tonight, I started with 120 ft/lbs which is around what has been discussed in the past on this site and went up to 160ft/lb,s max I could do with my torque wrench, wheels still came loose. One of the race teams I spoke to torques them to 350ft/lbs, the same as they use on their F2 cars and GT40s and say they dont have any issues.

TTR hubs and wheels on my car

I do my road car to 300Nm ( 220 lbs/ft) and was intending to start with that on the GTS (TTR hubs)

661 wrote:A large number of the race cars I see now have the hubs the other way around . Normally in an Elan the top of the spinner goes to the front of the car to tighten. Many reverse the hub, the same direction of tightening to most other spinner cars. Plenty of threads on this.
I've set mine up in standard direction, as per Colin Chapman, as per Tony Thompson. TT says they never come loose unless they've been tightened wrongly...?....
Most others I've spoken with will tell stories of loose wheels, but mainly rears.

I'm going to use through the hub locking clips for the rears and 'put the fronts on properly' and see what happens.

I have raced an Elan with standard knock off fittings and if anything have found the nuts tighter after a race than before. The nuts act like an epicyclic gear, and if there is any free play in the wheel will attempt to tighten themselves up. Jags (for example) have a 'female' cone in the nut rather than the male cone of an Elan nut and have to be fitted to the opposite side of the car to an Elan as the epicyclic effect works the other way around. I would therefore not use other marques as a guide to fitting Elan hubs as it is design specific.

To those who have problems with nuts coming loose, I would suggest that they check again that they are on the correct side. Properly fitted, the design should be self tightening.

Pictures of the extended drive peg nuts, turned down from aluminium hex bar.

Do they unbalance the wheel?

I have not noticed any affect on the wheel balancing, they are aluminium so the weight is negligible. The idea was copied from other Elan race cars.

Andy