Hello, you’re on Car Talk! Over the weekend, I rented a U-Haul 6x12 trailer. It worked great for carrying the literal ton of stuff that I put into it. After about 100 miles of light interstate driving, about a half mile from the return location, there was a light *clickclickclickclickclick* and then a *whuppawhuppawhuppa* noise and vibration characteristic of a horrifically balanced tyre. The wheel had COMPLETELY sheared from the axle! I am unable to link the photo, but the entire wheel hub had flew threw the bottom drum/mount and covered the drum in this silty black grease. This [citation needed] is not caused by a pothole. I suspect that this was the result of an overpressurizing master cylinder which literally exploded the drum brake, but this is unlikely because this only happened on only one wheel. The trailer was riding pretty dreadful, but this is probably because I’m a towing newbie. Anyways, what do you guys think?
Sounds like it wasn't screwed in properly, maybe the bolts (if there were any) gave in which caused the wheel hub including axle to shift downwards, which caused the drum to give away due to constant smacking with the hub with the weight of an axle joined onto it. Or it was the same situation except it slowly happened causing the wheel to gradually make sounds before the drum gave way.
Thanks, but I’m not entirely sure that is what happened. The U-Haul trailers aren’t sprung super stiffly, so what would cause the entire wheel hub the repeatedly shift downwards rather forcefully. I may be wrong, but that seems a tad unlikely. --- Post updated --- Here is the photo:
Not entirely sure, as you said trailer, so it could be that the leaf spring or entire suspension holding system gave way? I'm not too infographic about trailers, I'd guess that it definitely went wrong! I am going to guess that something caused the wheel hub (the bit behind the brakes) to give way, causing the wheel hub to start driving into the drum. --- Post updated --- Hmm, reverting my theories... I'm guessing something caused the leaf to either collapse or break, causing something to shift the wheel hub outwards, or the drum inwards?
In the photo, the spring from the right hand shoe seems to have just sprung out, and the left hand side spring is entirely missing. The drum casing appears to have been shifted right as well, suggesting that something caused the top right of the shoe to push waaaay to hard. Could have been an axle linkage, but the trailer drove really well even after the wheel fell off...
This is the leaf... looks ok imo --- Post updated --- I’m not great with drum breaks (see what I did there?), what is this bit?
According to my non-trained skills at judging whether a trailer is fine or not, it looks as if something went through the brake drum?
Also, I just realized something: the drum could have been broken as a result of the wheel hub smacking it at speed.
