wheel fell off while driving..

[sam_]

hey everybody! hope everyone's doing well! so, i have a rather interesting story to tell with pics to follow up later on today...so I live in LA and on Sunday afternoon I was driving to my friends house to give my e30 its first detail (while with me, but, what looked to be its first detail :roll:). So on my way there, i was cruising at a solid 40 mph down one of the busiest LA streets (santa monica blvd for you so cal people) and all of a sudden i felt a strange brief vibration in the steering wheel, then, a judder as i started to slow down and then boom, I loud clunking noise and i turned around to see my rear driver side wheel sitting nicely on the ground behind me as my car hit the ground and slid for a few feet. In shock, I sat in the car (which i just bought) thinking "holy shit my dream car is wrecked". that thought was in my mind for quite sometime as I waited for my buddies to come to the rescue...we physically LIFTED the car off the ground in order to get a jack under it..granted this was all in LA traffic...and tried to put the wheel on just for the sake of rolling it off to the side of the road.. but sadly the stripped lugs were simply not catching. we called AAA and someone with came and got the wheel on and got it towed to my buddies house. NOW, it set in...how f*cked am i? thankfully, not in the slightest!! i bought a set of 4 new OEM lugs to throw on my temporary wheels but the only other thing broken was what i believe to be a heat shield/brake dust guard type of thing behind the rotor...we inspected the rotor/ suspension/ hub and everything! there is luckily no damage to the body of the car..the bumpers got a little scrathced up on the bottom but theyre getting replaced soon with post F/L bumpers so who gives a crap really plus its nothing noticeable unless youre beneath the car! all in all, im very thankful for how this transpired as i couldve hurt another driver/pedestrian or even wrecked my car! i'll post some pics up tomorrow but thought it was an interesting story to share lol

[Dakotademon7]

That is a crazy story. Glad it all turned out ok.

[IRON-E]

Holy shit man, how long have you had this car? Maybe someone tried to steal your wheels?
My buddy had this very thing happen too but, with a bit more damage to his rotor and control arm.

Best of luck to you, and I would suggest re-torquing your lug nuts whenever possible.

[Andy348]

Not fun, is it? Had the same thing happen, unluckily broke the wheel bearing too.

The factory jack is actually quite helpful in this scenario, if for nothing else just to lift the body up enough to get a jack underneath it.

[Roysneon]

Lucky it wasn't the front wheel, that would have been a much worse scene.

I'm pretty forgetful and scatterbrained sometimes when working on cars, so I've left a wheel loose and heard it knocking around on the highway. Pulled over and I had lost a wheel bolt and the rest were all loose. tightened the hell out of the three and got home.

[Thizzelle]

I had my left driver side rear wheel come loose but caught it before anything crazy. 1 bolt was all the way out but I have caps on so it was just sitting there.

[heatmakerz]

Damn, you were lucky you didn't damage anything. Even though I must admit it would have been entertaining to see your car turn into a ghetto sled on Santa Monica.

[Sea Aych]

Shit man, consider yourself super lucky! Also glad the wheel didn't roll off and flatten someone at 40mph!
My aunt once drove a fully loaded (with baggage) odyssey 200km after getting her winters taken off to find, once she got to my place, that all the bolts were barely hand tight...

[Stanley Rockafella]

whenever you notice ANY SUDDEN vibrations in the steering (braking, or steering) get off the road immediately!

Twice it's happened to me. Once I just got a new set of tires on my 97 Escort, and another time I had a brand-new rented 2011 Impala and while carving my way through the rockies, I noticed vibrations in the wheel whenever I used the brakes. Even slightly touching them created a vibration. Sur enough, once I got off the highway (first safe place to do so) I pulled out the Lug wrench and tightened em all down

[Haystack]

This happened to me after getting off the Long Island Expressway. I had been doing about 70 right before I got off an exit, I hadn't noticed anything. As it turns out, a coworker had switched around the wheels on some of the dually pickups. He neglected to tighten everything down.

It's quite scary to see two tires flying off into the woods. I'm just glad it didn't happen on the highway or someone would have been seriously injured.



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[Cabriolet]

lost the same wheel on the freeway 9 years ago in my 325es. oddly enough at 65mph i didnt have a clue it was gone, just thought it was a flat. calmly merged and exited the freeway. at 35mph the rear disk touched down and all hell broke loose. much slide. so scare.
i hadn't tightened my lug nuts and 2 sheared off and two stripped out. disk was shot but no other damage. glade you are ok. i know how scary it is to lose a wheel. i never found mine.

[e30vert]

Glad there were no injuries.

Learn to use the Return key on the keyboard to break sentences into paragraphs. It makes for an easier read. With the text all blocked together like that its easy to loose ones place.

Had this happen on an old VW Super Beetle. Since it was rear brake drums I replaced the inner shoes. Then when reassembling the rear I tried my best to tourqe the big axle nut to over 100 lbs of touque so it would stay on. Then noticed that the cotter pin that needs to go through the axle and bend outwards to help secure the axle nut was broken from wear.

I did not have another cotter key so I figured screw it I will drive down to the autoparts store and get a replacement. On the way there I was headed down a street at about 45 miles an hour and the rear wheel with brake drum still attached and bolted down came off. Driver side rear.

It was moving at about the same speed as I was before this happened. Shot across the roadway and sideswiped a parked cars drivers door and then that straightened its path out so that it was headed right down the street towards a busy intersection with people in cars and pedestrians passing perpendicular to the tire/rim/rotor. Imagine my sense of concern as I saw this impending doom. As it approached the intersection it just barely missed a kid on a bike riding across and then firmly center punched a car that was travelling across the intersection. That car then veered off center and clipped another car.

I honestly thought I was in the middle of a movie set and expected the pyrotechnics and fake gun fire to start.

In the end , I got the tire/rim/rotor combo back. Jacked it up and put it on. Rolled it off to the side of the road. Lets just say my insurance company was not too happy about the claims that it was seeing on my policy that month. All the damages were taken care of in full and nobody was injured.

Taught me a lesson. Thats for sure. Dont dick around with repairing vehicles. If I dont have the right part for the repair the car will sit until I do and proper torques must be observed.

[TimKninja]

Almost had the same thing happen to me a couple of weeks ago.

A few months prior I had patched a Tire on my grilfriends car. Torqued everything down to spec.

Drove up to Montreal Canada in her car, and on the way back I noticed a vibration. It started to get worse and worse and eventually I had to pull over on the side of the highway, checked the lugs and they were FINGER TIGHT. Same wheel i had patched, torqued on with a Snap-On Torque Wrench. Cant figure out for the life of me why they loosened back up. Just glad I pulled over when i did.

[Sea Aych]

Drove up to Montreal Canada in her car, and on the way back I noticed a vibration. It started to get worse and worse and eventually I had to pull over on the side of the highway, checked the lugs and they were FINGER TIGHT. Same wheel i had patched, torqued on with a Snap-On Torque Wrench. Cant figure out for the life of me why they loosened back up. Just glad I pulled over when i did.

You basically need cement and divine intervention to hold your car together on montreal-quality roads :p Snap-on had no chance haha
Glad you pulled over quickly!

[sam_]

Glad there were no injuries.

Learn to use the Return key on the keyboard to break sentences into paragraphs. It makes for an easier read. With the text all blocked together like that its easy to loose ones place.

.

Sorry, wrote that super late after a few drinks so I was just trying to get the message across.

Thanks everyone though for the kind words and glad to know I wasn't alone on this one! As for the potential for wheel theft... I really doubt someone tried to do that. The lugs did not unscrew btw...two of them just split in half and sheered right off and the other two were just yanked out of the hub as a result (luckily no intense stripping but definitely caused some wear).

Since the incident though I have noticed a light squeak coming from that wheel so maybe the wheel bearings are shot? I'll need to take a further look into it but as of now just driving around my lx 470 til I get my OEM lugs in the mail and my basketweaves ;D