Lock out hub damage - opinions

[montaillou]

Recently I had new wheels/tires put on and the hubs are far more exposed than they used to be. I had a shop install these almost 2 years ago. Due to my trust in them, the previous wheels having a center offset, and my never needing to adjust the hubs, I may have missed this if it happened some time ago. These are Ouverson lock outs.

The first pic is of the passenger side and there for comparison. On the driver side the spindle is jammed and won't turn, though I didn't exactly try to force it - it is turned passed the area it's normally supposed to be at.

My question is:

Would this have been done at time of install (a screw up), at time of wheel swap (a different screw up) or is this a failure in the product?

I sent these pics to my mechanic on Monday, no accusations, just asking their opinion, and they failed to get back to me. When I spoke to them today (Friday), they told me I'd have to bring it in so they can take a look. I don't know enough about this product to know if this is something that would occur as a result of product failure or it it could only have occurred due to negligence.

 

[tobyS]

It's hard to see what you are talking about. They stick out far with half a budd.

 

[montaillou]

It's hard to see what you are talking about.

In the first pic the casing is flush. In the 2nd pic you can see that the casing is pulled out a little, maybe 1-2 mm.

In the 3rd pic the handle arrow is pointing to a place that is outside the normal arc where you would turn it. and the handle is supposed to turn freely inside the arc that is between the "FREE" and "LOCK" which are bordered by two small circles so it looks like:

O FREE >>

or

O LOCK >>

Between these >> and << is where the arrow on the handle is supposed to turn.

The handle doesn't turn. It's jammed.

While normally I don't like to assign blame, as this will probably cost me money to fix, I'm all for figuring out who might be responsible.

On thinking back to the order of things, I had the air lockers installed after the lock out hubs and one of the axles I had air lockers installed in was the front - and I'm wondering if maybe the damage occurred then.

 

[tobyS]

Why don't you take the lock off and see if the spline is aligning and sliding in and out freely? They are not very complicated inside.

 

[davidb56]

Possibly the spindle nut and lock tab backed off allowing the axle to move outbound? You'll never know until you take a peek.

 

[gringeltaube]

Possibly the spindle nut and lock tab backed off allowing the axle to move outbound? You'll never know until you take a peek.

No way would that cause that gap...!

.... you can see that the casing is pulled out a little, maybe 1-2 mm.

Not the body, just the lid which holds the dial mechanism in place.
If you didn't touch those 8 screws, then they either stretched- or worse, ripped out of their threaded holes, due to that close encounter...
The dial disc went beyond its normal stop position because the poppet ball has jumped out of its detent hole.

Now, try to unscrew those 8 screws; remove the lid/dial assembly and be careful enough to catch that little bearing and spring, before they land somewhere in the grass.
It is not difficult to reassemble but first we need to know what happened to the screws.

 

[montaillou]

Thanks for this. I really didn't know what to expect when opening it up. It's one thing for someone to say, "these things aren't complicated", and they're not, but if you've never seen the inside...

So, I laid several sheets of paper towel on the ground. The ball bearing had created an indent on the plastic about 2mm away from the spring. Also, even some of the outside bolts that hadn't backed out were loose. Only 2 of the outside bolts were tightened, even in areas where the casing was still flush. As a precaution, I checked the other side, and they were all tight.

I don't know if the casing came loose on it's own because it wasn't tightened down and the handle/bearing jumped out of where it was supposed to be or what.