[Philip Pronto]

After nearly a month and 400 miles, my new second-hand Zoe had developed a strange knocking sound from around the front offside. It sounded like a worn CV joint - unlikely with only 2.8k miles on the clock - it turned out to be loose wheel nuts on the front offside wheel. Re-tightened to 105 nm and a smear of Loctite on each wheel nut and knocking gone.

Is this a Zoe thing, has anyone else experienced this, or has some idiot mechanic not done their job properly (car was serviced before I collected it)?

 

[Tooney]

I'm voting idiot mechanic...

 

[richtrash]

I'm voting idiot mechanic...

I bet he/she put them in and went to get the air gun and got distracted by a text/WhatsApp/facebook message

 

[Big277wave]

Worrying, usually they are way over torqued.

 

[donald]

Never use any glues like that, Bad Idea.

Equally don't put any lubricants on as this upsets the torque setting. In fact glue will lubricate the thread also, before it sets, so your nuts will be at the wrong setting now.

A correctly tightened bolt creates a clamping load between the surfaces bolted together. This is the important feature, to ensure no movement that would cause the bolt to 'undo'. Small repeated movements is what does it.

The best thing to do with wheel nuts is let them get a bit rusty! This creates a little bit of a stick-slip behaviour (you know when you have enough as it will 'crack' as you undo it, or get it up to full torque) and this will damp out any rotary loads that will tend to undo the bolt.

I would not be surprised to find that EVs need higher wheel nut settings due to the high torque at low speed. The Ampera has a 140Nm setting, FWIW.