This happened on the way out of town yesterday. We had already gone on a small trip to have lunch with my grandparents.

Here's the story:

We got everything loaded up in the car to head out. I stopped by the carwash to wash the car. On the way there I noticed an unusually loud growl sound at cruise or deceleration. It went away under acceleration. On with the carwash. We get out of the carwash and it's getting louder. We're now headed to the gas station about a half mile away.

It starts getting worse. Once I get within eye shot of the gas station the whole car starts woobling. I'm thinking, OK, maybe it's a flat. I start slowing down, to about 15-20 to make it to the gas station, which is now about 1000 feet away. All of the sudden it feels like what I guess would be the blowout of an already deflated tire because it starts woobling bad, like moving the steering wheel uncontrolably and the front left of the car drops a little.

I decide it might be best to go ahead and pull off the road. When I turn the wheel to pull off the road the front of the car SLAMS down and makes this horrindous scraping sound with some tire smoke. I get pulled over to the shoulder and this is what it looks like.





It turns out, the first drop and wobble was the hub coming out of the tire, so the brake rotor is riding on the inside of the rim. Once I turned a little to go to the shoulder, the rotor turns right out of the inside of the rim resulting in the 2nd slam and scraping sound.

Here's a look behind the car of how far it scraped;

http://www.woracing.com/truck/wheel%20off/100_1113.JPG

You can see the Exxon just ahead (where the white car is) that I was going to stop at to fill up and check out the noise.

Here's a picture after we got it out of the highway. This is the fender right behind the wheel.

http://www.woracing.com/truck/wheel%20off/100_1116.JPG

The fender, front plastic piece, fender well, and body moulding on the fender and bottom will all have to be replaced. The brake rotor got ate up pretty bad as well as the tire and rim.

I had the tires rotated and balanced 2 weeks ago at a local tire shop. Tomorrow I'm going to get some estimates to get it fixed.

 

Here's the rest of the pics.

http://www.woracing.com/truck/wheel%20off/

 

did you find out why the tire fell off? Good luck with the car.

 

The lugnuts fell off. I found one in the driveway just behind the car and 2 more just behind where I'm standing in that first pic.

 

dam that sux
something similar happend to a friends 90 intergra. he was goin around a corner and i think the axle broke.

 

Yeah, that's what it looked like. Oopsie. Bet someone will be looking for a new job come Tuesday.

 

 

that sucks alot man.

yeah, it happened to the 91 f 150 I had in high school. A shop did some work to it and obviously didn't put the rear driver's wheel back on very good. It came off while leaving our subdivision though. They had to pay to fix the dented fender and some other stuff.

 

You probably signed a waiver when you had the work done. All of the shops have a clause in the work order that you acknowledge, something along the lines of: "due to material differences between steel lugnuts and aluminum wheels you will recheck lug nut torque within the first 150 miles driven".

 

How many times have you been told Righty Tighty...Lefty Loosey




J/K, but under the circumstances, you gotta admit it's kinda funny. Damn good thing it happened where it did, and not out on the freeway. It's scary to imaginge how bad that could have been. God luck with it. If the tire shop doesn't help, take out a full page add in the local paper and show the pictures.