Well, not completely off. It has been making noise, and I have an appointment to get it fixed Monday. Clearly not soon enough. Coming home from the movies it started making more noise and then boom! it just stopped turning. I pulled off the road and none of the lug nuts were there and there are metal shavings everywhere. it wasn’t totally on, but not totally off. I was lucky.
Some old guy picked me up hitchhiking and says he’ll go out and fix it. I’m not comfortable with that, to be honest, but hey, he was nice enough to stop. If he can fix it I’ll pay him.
:eek: Scary! Do you know what caused it? I mean, I don’t think wheels are supposed to get loose and fall off…? Did the mechanic who last rotate or change your tires forget to put the lug nuts back on?
Well it looks like one of the lugs snapped off. This must have caused the wheel to be loose enough to vibrate and cause the other lug nuts to come off. Other than that, I have no idea how the lug snapped.
What sort of noise was it making before? Was it a 'click click click", especially when cornering hard? If you’ve got a FWD car, it might be that the CV joint was making that noise because it was worn. Then it eventually failed and the wheel wanted to keep turning because of the weight of the car pushing it along the road, but the CV joint had seized up, resulting in the wheel trying to part company with the car.
Just my uninformed WAG though. One of the mechanics will no doubt be along shortly to tell me I’m full of it.
You’re full of it.
A failed / failing CV joint won’t casue either a lug stud failure, or the lug nuts to loosen up and fall off.
A wheel that has not had the lug nuts torqued to specification can with time, have the lug nuts loosen up and fall off, or have a stud failure.
I would suggest that you have all the studs on that wheel changed, and ask that the other wheels be checked for proper lug nut torque.
The most common cause of broken studs (other than wild women) is the use of air wrenches that over torque.
You can ask that the tighten them by hand, but be prepared for some dirty looks when you do.
I’ve had this happen on my semi and it can get expensive, but the majority of tire shops don’t pay attention to proper torque settings for lug nuts.
Among the ones that do pay attention to the proper torque spec, they STILL don’t manage to pay attention to proper toquiing pattern. You’re supposed to tighten down each lugn in a star-pattern, first just tightening them enough to make the wheel contact the hub, and then applying about 33% of max torque on about 3 subsequent run-throughs. You are NOT supposed to just drive each lugnut to 100% of spec one at a time, this causes stress on the lugs, and if you have disk brakes this can cause them to warp slightly under the stress.
