Yikes! My car's front wheel fell off today while I was driving.

Whew.

This afternoon, I was at the head of our street making a right hand turn when my car suddenly went "Thunk" and stopped in the middle of the intersection. At fist I thought I'd hit something, or had a flat tire.

But when I got out and looked,my left front wheel had literally fallen off the axle. Yikes!

Although it was a bunmmer, in some ways I was lucky. I was heading out to drive about 50 miles to pick someone up at the airport when it happened. If that had happened while I was going 65 on the Thruway, I'd probably be a dead duck right now.

Anyway, that was my day. How was yours? :evilgrin:

Glad you're OK. Fuckin' cars, man....

How scary that must have been.... :scared:

the same thing happened to both my dad and aunt. Fortunately they were only pulling out of the driveway when it happened. They both owned Chevy Blazers, needless to say they never bought another one again!

Or, as I affectionately call it" "That damn piece of shit."

They'll tow you when you're 'down and out'!

:D

:hi:

I have AARP motorist emergency plan. But, like a dork, I hadn't gotten around to putting it in my wallet. So I didn;t have the card with me.

A nice couple stopped and let me use their cell phone. But I kept getting caught in voice mail hell when I tried to find the emergency number.

A cop came along, and called a tow truck, which is not affiliated with AARP. So now I have to see if they'll cover it anyway.

Life lesson -- Take the damn card with me.

:-(

Never again.

The wife and I were heading down the the AF base in Altus, OK in a rental car. We were doing the speed limit (70 I think), This pickup truck pulling a fifth wheeler, from Texas, rode my bumper for about ten minutes. Eventually, when the oncoming traffic cleared, it decided to pass me, wobbling like crazy. I turned to my wife and said "That idiot is going way too fast, he's going to lose one of his tires" (I own and drive a Winnebago, btw)). Two minutes later, we saw an animal dart in front of oncoming traffic near the trailer - or it looked like an animal for a second - until I realised that the trailer had, indeed, lost one of its driver side tires. I didn't make any observations about any other idiots we saw that trip...

That's not your normal everyday sort of occurrence.

It wasn't acting noticasbly strange before this happened.

I'm guessing maybe something rusted through and came loose. But I don't know squat about cars, so that's only a guess.

bad ball joints? Could be several different front end parts though, same thing happened to my father in law years ago.

I mentioned ball joints because my daughter's vehicle just got recalled because wheels have fallen off due to the ball joints. She drives a durango.

I should look up to see if there's a recall or something.

I'm just hoping the repair work isn't worth more than the car.

I had a REAR wheel fall off once - just after I had brake work done. Dipshit didn't tighten the lug nuts well enough, and it happened at about 50 mph. I didn't even have much warning - a little vibration, then WHAM! It was at night, and in the rearview I could see a shower of sparks trailing behind me. I couldn't see ahead very well, since the front end was pointed UP. The guy driving the car behind me stopped to see if I was alright, then told me the tire/wheel went rolling past me, went off the road, rolled through about ten people's lawns, and finally hit a chain-link fence.

The brake shop balked about fixing my car, but I threatened lawsuits and bad word-of-mouth - including signs posted on my car warning people away from his shop. He fixed it.

my day wasn't THAT shitty:hug:

...and, like you, fortunately was not going at a high speed! The wheel did not come all the way off...the control arm on my '68 Impala broke, and the front passenger side tire fell horizontal on the ground. It was right near a Sears Auto Center in my armpit of a hometown in the Hudson Valley, so I walked over to the Auto Center, and asked the employees if they could fix it. They replied that it would have to be towed the whole 100 yards to their shop. So I got back in the car, determined that if I went in reverse it would right the wheel to the upright position, and just backed it down the street and into the repair bay!

It lodged in there, which at least kept the whole front end from crashing to the ground.

(Hudson Valley eh? We might be sorta neighbors, depending how far you are frtomn western Mass.)

I had a real nice set of nuts once - no, seriously - and someone had them partway off and I guess got scared off before they could get them. So I was going about 45 and the front end started to wobble real bad. I hit the brakes and the front driver's side tire shot off straight sideways and hit a brick building with enough force to deform the rim. Meanwhile, the whole brake assembly dragged along the pavement and got real messed up. It was a bummer day.

Not my nuts, but my lugnuts.

I doubt anyone would want to steal them, except for devious mischief. But maybe devious mischi

fucking scary as hell, no steering.........at all.

the wheel just turned around and around.

was driving, on a undivided, 4-lane highway and i was on a curve when it happened, so i was curving into on-coming traffic. slammed on the floor brakes and emergency brakes so hard i had to replace them too. cars zoomed by on my right and left just to get out of the way. i thought i was going to die.

Once saw a pickup truck literally break in half on the freeway. It was an older rusted out full sized pickup on the opposite side with a 70 foot median. I was a passenger so I got to stare at it. My old roomie was driving and pissed that he didn'r get to see it.

The only thing I can imagine that would cause it to just "explode" the way it did would be for the front of the drive shaft to separate, drop to the ground, dig in and rip the back of the truck off. There were two halfs of the truck rolling down the highway. I watched the guy driving appear to calmly steer the front half to the side of the road while the back half just kept rolling along, shedding hunks of rust and metal everywhere. I'm willing to bet that he was due for a change of underwear after it was over though.

She was driving my grandmother's 1956 Cadillac and slammed on the brakes when another car ran a red light.

She heard a clunk on the road and was unable to go forward when the light turned green.

Getting out, she saw that the car was standing pigeon-toed (its wheels both turned inward), and there were pieces of metal on the street. Investigation revealed that the tie rods had broken.

Glad you're incident turned out all right.

which aren't really lugnuts, but cover the real lugnuts?

3 times now, after taking my Lumina minivan in for new tires, the service people have tightened these mock-lugnuts with a heavy-duty power tool instead of by hand, and the result has been that they applied too much torque to the real lugnuts. I almost lost a wheel 2 of those times...

they're out to get everyone!

Can I send them the repair bill?