Wheel mounting style

[Eric Wallace]

Would anyone be able to tell me if the front wheels on my 2001 Monterey Trinidad (33 foot) are hub pilot or stud pilot mounted?
I replaced the rears many years ago with aluminum and want to do it now on the fronts, but Alcoa offers both types of mounting and I can't remember which is used on my coach.
Thanks.

[Mike Shumack]

Are the lug nuts one-piece with a tapered face, or two piece (have a sort of rotating washer) with a flat face? As you probably know the hub pilot style use the flat face lug nut. I would bet they are hub pilot. The stud pilot went out of favor in the 80s.

A lot of the aluminum wheels will work with either style (they are made with the tapered hole and machined for hub piloting).
You may need to go to longer wheel studs too, since the aluminum wheels are thicker.

[Eric Maclean Co-Admin]

Mike
My 1997 Patriot 40 footer has stud piolted bud nuts which Beaver used on many of the Magnum era chassis.

A hub piloted wheel actually uses the support lugs or fingers on the wheel hub to carry the weight of the vehicle to the inner circle of the wheel dish where as a stud piloted wheel Carry's the vehicles weight on the wheel studs and nuts .

If the inner circle of the wheel is not touching or sitting on the hub support lugs the wheel is stud piloted.
As mentioned stud piloted wheels use tapered wheel nuts or ball nuts to center the wheel as the hub lugs don't touch the wheel and there fore can't center the wheel.
 If your coach has bud nuts it's an easy task to check.
 remove one of your rear chrome nut covers if you see a 1 1/2 inch outter nut with a large stud with a square end on it sticking through the nut what you are looking at is a bud nut where there is an inner nut which holds the inner wheel on and has treads on its exterior which the outter wheel is held on with.
Both inner and outer nuts have ball ends and the wheels will have ball seats for the nuts to seat into .
On a front wheel of a bud nut equiped vehicle there is a special wheel nut used with a ball seat and deep bushing section as part of the wheel nut to fill the larger hole which is needed for the inner nut used on the rear dual wheels to past through.
Sorry for running on hope this isn't too confusing.
Eric

[Richard Davis]

Here is a nice Youtube video contrasting the differences between hub and stud piloted wheels.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=GJu5wICBlks