check lugnuts before test drive or this happens

nice night for trip around the block. as you can see i had a long straightaway. was going for 3rd gear when wheel came off. went up the neighbors tree and came down , landed in a fence row. wife and neighbor got a good laugh. sorry no video,mabye next time. minor damage, glad not painted yet. front just loosely bolt on. will check everything next time. fun driving with bailing wire for throttle linkage. battery cables held with clamps. fun time in a small town. lesson learned.

 

too much excitement for me.

Did you check to see if the wheels hit the rivets on the front drums, or if they seat flat like they're supposed to? I grind the rivet heads off of my old chevys when I put newer wheels on them

 

glad nothing worse happened, good luck getting that wrinkle out

 

What dragged against the road? Looks like the drum may have took some of that s****ping but did the lower A-arm or anything else? I see two lines s****ped into the road?

Good thing it's only light damage.. Could have been worse though.

 

This is how people get killed and old cars/hot rods and the sorts get a bad rap.
You NEED to make sure the car is safe before taking it on the road or even the parking lot. Tires, wheels, brakes, steering-uber important! Front sheet metal barely hanging on, clamps on the battery cables and bailing wire are not of the brightest idea, but who hasnt done that.
Wheels, though can and do KILL people. Lesson learned I hope. Personally, I torque wheels every time I put them on. Even if I think I am going to take them off. This keeps that kind of mistake from happening.

 

Man- never do dodgy throttle fixes if at all possible. Scary idea right there.

I got semi- close to that wheel thing once- with a LF, when I was about 30 y.o.
At first I thought it was a big end knock. I got out at traffic lights, and on the way to the hood remembered I just changed a wheel & I had the sense to inspect it there & then. I had nipped the lug nuts, but not torqued them down. No damage apparent. I'd gone 2 miles max.

 

i think i forgot to tighten lugnuts. been a roller for a while. the spring around the hub came off. bottom front shock bolt was the other line.

 

car stopped in my front yard. just went down the road you can see, turned around and came back. would never put anyone in danger. but yeah lesson learned.

 

It happens. That's how we learn. Glad no serious damage was done.

 

Got a good deal on a 55 chevy once because the frontend was so bad and needed to be rebuilt. 10 minuyes with a grinder and it was a new car.

 

Got mags? Ya gotta check them once in awhile. It's a old old rule.

 

I had the lug nuts come loose, 2 come off, after driving from New York to Missouri and back to Cleveland. Luckily I was on the by-p*** around Cleveland.

 

Glad you and car are ok. I have a "pre drive" checklist on every car I do, and add to it during the build, cause as Father Time is creeping up on me, I dont remember all the small stuff I once did.

 

Is it just me or do we get soo excited to drive our project we space out on the littlest things? Lugnuts for example. Did that to 2 different cars. No flying wheels,thank god. Glad your ok and no one got hurt.

 

Had the left wheel come off on my 64 Comet. Not cool. Glad you are ok

 

I did the same thing once. Luckily I was going slow through a neighborhood and felt the looseness in the front end. Spooky stuff man.

 

When I was 16 I thought cotter pins were just a little extra deal that those paranoid engineers added. Had the lower a arm separate from my spindle at 40 miles an hour. Scary ****. Glad you're ok


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20 years ago, I was driving a stock 54 Chevy 2dr hardtop. One of my jerk coworkers at the time had removed all but one lug nut on each wheel while I was working. They even went so far as to throw the loose nuts in under the full stock hub caps. When I drove out of the parking lot the car was all over the road. I made it about a mile before all four wheels fell of the car at about 40mph. It scared the **** out of me. I never figured out which idiot had played the "prank" on me. I saw it as attempted murder.

 

Good to learn from your mistakes- cheaper and safer to learn from someone elses.

 

Been there done that. About 1979 i was heading to work down the 405 when this tire and wheel goes by me, thought man somebody ain't gonna be happy. About that time the left rear drops down and oh **** it is mine! Pull over and watch the tire roll up and over a Porsche! Guy gets out looking down the freeway and i am like oh **** now i am in trouble. Guy puts the tire in his car and a few minutes later he pulls up and says " I think i have something of yours" and pulls out the tire and rim. I ask if anything happened to his car and he says no but you are lucky. That was a huge lesson learned that day.

 

That will probably buff right out.

 

How is that a prank? I would of kicked somebody's ***!

 

i had an axle break, come out punch a hole in the car,and watched it roll around the neighborhood with the axle and big mickey thompson. lucky it didnt hit anything or worse kill someone. when these things happen you thank god and feel very lucky if you only wind up with minor damage. things can turn out much worse

 

The wife lost an aluminum wheel off her Cadillac a few years ago because some tweaker had loosened the wheel in the parking lot where she worked but got scared off. When I took her to work the next day the center cap off the wheel was laying right where the car had been parked. ruined wheel and destroyed fender on that one.
Back in 1966 I did a brake job on my 55 Buick and lost a rear wheel on the way to school the next morning doing more than a bit above the speed limit. It left a groove in the pavement for several hundred feet to where I finally got the car off the road and stopped that stayed there until they redid the road. I never did find the wheel and tire.

 

we run a drag race group..One time I was watching a full size Dodge heading toward the staging lanes and noticed BOTH back wheels had a wobble in them. Walked over and he hadn't tightened any of the lugs on both rear wheels.
He obviously must have changed them after going thru tech inspection..(you'd think)

Rick
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Everybodys got a story. Here's mine.
I have a '33 roadster that was on the cover of Rod & Custom ( June 2012 ). I was getting ready for a cross-country trip to LA Roadster show. I had old wires and bias ply on the car but wanted radials for the long ride. So I put a set of wheels and tires together for the trip. Put them on the car and rolled it out side to see how they looked, like we all do. Rolled it back inside and finished up other stuff.
We were going to meet at Indy Good-Guys and leave from there, There were 8 cars going including Barry Lobeck. The morning we were going to leave Indy was really nice. We got out on I-70 and Barry and I were p***ing each other at around 80 MPH. I was going around Barry next to the divider wall and could here this loud clicking sound. You know we all know the sounds of our cars, so i said, **** I've got a front wheel bearing going out. Man everything is bran-new. So I pulled over to see what was wrong. I told the guys what I thought it was, and they said, well lets get to work. They popped the front hub cap off and suprize. Ther were 3 lug nuts in the cap and the other 2 were just barely on. Man, I got cold chills, I just p***ed Barry at 80 next to the wall. Well we popped the rest of the caps and they were all loose. Very lucky. Tightened them all and was back on the road without a hitch. Great trip, with a lot of great stories. Tom

 

You have to make sure some bozo in a tire shop doesn't over tighten them also. A friend of mine had new tires put on his Corvette. Going up the interstate out of Knoxville the wheel sheared off at the hub doing the speed limit. It took out the whole fender and they were lucky to get it under control. The insurance determined that the tire shop over torqued the aluminum wheels and that caused the wheel to break.

 

had this happen to me but someone else loosened my 2 front wheels on my 67 c10, i was in my junior year of high school. i pulled into the parking lot at school in the snow, both front wheels came off and BOOM i hit the pavement ! people are still talking about the at reunions and i graduated 30 yrs ago !!!

 

Ain't that fer true!!

 

i did the same on the c10. thankfully no one was hurt and no other cars were hit. luckily a stock oem fender was ending on ebay that day so i replaced it with factory sheetmetal. figured while i was in there anyway i might as well do disk brakes, new brake lines, power steering, and on and on. so that little looselugnut cost me 1k and 5 weekends of time lol. much easier to just tighten them!