Xantia spare wheel carrier

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mike davies
Posts: 9
Joined: 17 Feb 2001, 01:18
Location: United Kingdom
My Cars:

Xantia spare wheel carrier

Post by mike davies »

Just suffered the sudden loss of my spare wheel from under the car whilst driving. Loud bag from rear then another bang as the car behind me ran over my spare wheel.Lots of damage to the Passat.The metal bolt inside the car was still in place undamaged, ie threads perfect. The hook part was missing and could not be found at the scene.The wheel was intact and the tyre was fully inflated.How could it have dropped out? I bought a new hook from Citroen but it is twice as heavy and twice as thick in metal terms. There has been no recall for failures as far as I know. Could the modified part have been for anti theft or for failure. I am baffled as to how this could occur. Has anyone any ideas? The car is a HDI SX 110 bhp eastate 1999 model with only 26,000 miles on the clock<font size=4></font id=size4><font size=3></font id=size3>
Dave Burns
Posts: 1915
Joined: 14 May 2001, 05:30
Location: United Kingdom
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x 2

Post by Dave Burns »

There are two ways this can happen, firstly and most likely is that the bolt was never fully tightened when the spare wheel was installed, the bolt goes all the way through the hook and should nip up against the cradle and trap it, if not the motion of the car will cause the cradle to rock about and the bolt to unscrew its self, it's no secret that nuts and bolts can and do part company, the only other way it can get free is mechanical failure, the female thread may not have been correctly formed and may have been barely able to hang on, eventually just letting go, the actual hook did'nt fail or part of it would still have been screwed to the bolt, my money is on the first probable cause though.
Dave
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