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tighten your lugnuts...


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i took the brat on a flatbed up to a friends shop to weld the wheel wells after curing her of cancer.welded her up with some plate steel and everything was cool.do not have her licensed yet.but, being the sneaky bastard i am , i said "well, i 'll just drive her home on some back roads".and i did.until, eventually we (friend and welder following in my volvo) had to get on a main thouroghfare to proceed to my house.i lost him at a turn light.pulled off to the side to wait and checked out the axle noise i had been hearing the whole time.did not notiice my lug nuts coming off of my vehicle..about two blocks down the road , in the middle of shopping traffic,my drivers side front wheel came flying off and proceeded to bounse over the front of one car, behind another one on to a sidewalk on the opposite side of the street and back over to our side of the street.meanwhile i was sliding down the road on my balljoint nut.came to a stop, ran down the road at full speed to reacquire my tire and ran back.while i was running back my friend jumped out of the volvo, jacked up the front end and was pulling lugnuts off of the first wheel.i got back and while he was threading the first lugnut i grabbed two more and lowered her to the ground. off we went to get off of the road.pulled off, checked ALL the lugnuts, including the one he crossthreaded on and drove home , fast i might add.pulled her in the garage and shut the door.what a trip......check your lugnuts

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that is my biggest fear.

happened to my cousin. somehow he found all four lugnuts within 10 feet of eachother. i never understood how they always seem to all come off at once.

 

guess with a subaru, its hard to tell when a wheel is about to fall off, cuz theres always something wierd going on with the suspension =]

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Yep check those lug nuts :D

 

I was rolling around in my wagon some years ago. Everytime I hit the brakes I heard a loud THUD from the front right. Funny vibration at certain MPH too. Several thoughts were going through my brain as I drove around town. Pulled into a gas station, busted out the floor jack and proped her up. Getting my lug wrench to pull the wheel and see what was going on.... I notice all 4 lug nuts were so loose the wheel was on at a funny angle :slobber:

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That exact same thing happened to me, well, I had plates, and it was on a backroad, but my drivers front wheel fell off, bounced down the road etc. NOW CHECK YOUR BALLJOINT, when it happened to me, it completely sheered the nut and end of the balljoint off, which I didn't notice until I tried to go offroadin, I got good and far from civilization, when it popped out, hyperextending my DOJ, and rendering the thing completely immobile. it wouldn't even roll up onto the dolly to pull it home, we had to jack up the car from the sides, and back the dolly under it. then it spent 2 weeks on jack stands in my yard while I rebuilt the DOJ, and replaced the balljoints (what the heck, while I'm at it, I'll do the other side too)

 

this is an incredibly bad pic, but you get the idea, old one = right, replacement = left

post-3242-136027597725_thumb.jpg

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Heres a pic of when my brothers lug nuts came off, he ended up next to the orange thing on the right side of the road, good thing a culvert pipe was there to stop him. He said he was doing 55 when it happened. The tire passed him up and ended up by the barn on the left which is located on the other side of a 2 lane highway. The ball joint got ground down passed the nut. Poked what was left of the ball joint back in the controll arm and drove it home 2 miles I am still to this day not sure how it got that far without popping out?

 

306N2.jpg

 

yes that is his mark in the road.

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I had the left rear wheel fly off my '84 hatch at about 40 on a back road two years ago. The wheel bounced/rolled a few hundred yards ahead of me, but I was lucky enough to be in the dirt on the side of the road when it happened so there was little or no damage to the drum. Didn't have a jack, never found the lugs, and had to hitch about 25 miles home. Now I carry a 1/2" torque wrench whenever I rally and hit the lugs befor hitting the trail.

 

Those bouncing wheels can be deadly, glad to hear you made it home and know one was hurt.

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  • 3 years later...

This just happened to me Tuesday night. Heard a noise, but assumed it was a bad CV, because the boot was torn and the other axle was just replaced a couple months back.

 

Left, front wheel came off @ 50mph and I watched it rolling down the highway next to me. Put it in 4wd, and drove the car into the nearest parking lot on the rotor. I was amazed how well the car drove, lol!

 

All I could think of was it hitting a car and having a claim on my insurance. Luckily, I found it 300' down the road leaning against the guardrail.... brand new tire, too.

 

No way I could locate the lugs, so I'm in need of 4 Pug lugnuts if anyone has any laying around. I'm currently driving around with 3 on each wheel.

 

Looking at them, I can't tell if they're tapered or ball seat. Does anyone know; I tried going to Pep Boys, but didn't see anything that looked correct.

 

-Todd

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I use a torque wrench EVERY time I install a lugnut 75-100 ftlbs

 

I once lost a nut on a H alloy, put a pug nut on, all was good

I use a torque wrench every time all. IN ADDITION, I re-torque them again 300 to 500 miles later. Having had a wheel come off years ago, I learned from my error.
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Something like this hasnt happened to me in a Subaru, but I had the drivers side front wheel fall off of a 97 F-150 out in bumbf**k nowhere one day. Kinda interesting story; me and a friend i worked with during the summer where out on our rounds way out past Royal City (Bumbf**k nowhere) and i was having some fun :grin: . Anyway, I was drifting on a gravel road that i drifted on regularly, except today i think i was going just a tad too fast. I cranked the wheels, and the truck went straight, so i yelled Oh S**T! cuz I had to avoid the Telephone pole i was headed for now. I got it right between the pole and the support cable, so no body damage (other than what was already there). I did manage to flatten both driver side tires though :-\ . So I put in in 4x4 and backed it out of the 4 foot dirtdile I managed to lodge it in, and changed the flatter front tire. I tightened all 5 lugnuts, I made sure of that. So were drivin along, and I knew i f**ked something up, cuz it was making lots of weird noises, but i really didnt care, the truck is a piece of crap anyways. We drove it for about 3 hours out to Quincy and in the surrounding areas and we were on our way back towards Royal City. We made a left turn goin pretty fast, and it sounded like the axle was gonna go, so we slowed down. Then, as we were about to make a right turn, I thought the axle had snapped, cuz it was clunking loudly. All of a sudden, WHAMM! the driver side front wheel is lodged in the upper wheel well. We skidded about 40 feet, and if we had been goin along at the speeds we had been earlier (as opposed to the 10 mph to make the turn) we prolly wouldve rolled it. So we got to sit around the truck, which was lying helpless in the middle of the road, for about 4 hours waiting for a tow truck to come from Moses Lake. Oh and it was the 5th of July, prolly the hottest day of the summer over where we were this year. Luckily we were getting paid for the time :headbang: . I only found 2 of the studs, they had the nuts on them, and all 5 were sheared off completely. PICS!!!

 

The studs I found

Foundthestudsontheroad.jpg

 

The truck in the middle of the road

theWheelFellOFF.jpg

 

Look Mom! No lug nuts!!!

Wheelstudsaregone.jpg

 

Boss man never did find out what actually went down that day...:banana: .

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had this happen to me at about 11 PM on christmas eve in my datsun 280Z a few years back... was temproarily running some AR rims on the back that required acornd styl lugnuts, not flat shoulder ones like my normal rims. no one in my family knew that; "they needed spacers to fit on a Z."

 

got about four miles from the shop, noise got so bad I turned around to go inspect.. 1.4 mile from the shop, cross train tracks, and the D/S rear wheel was GONE.... grinding on the LCA.

 

The wheel belonged to my brother, so christmas morning he and I were delaying the fmaily breakfast (really my family's BIG christmas tradition) so he and I could go find his rim :lol::rolleyes::grin:

 

A HARROWING experience to say the least.

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  • 6 months later...

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