Rocked it till the wheel fell off... on the freeway.

[ravingmadman]

Hey there fellow hoe bags. The latest saga of "the hoe" continues.

So I'm headed to my 10 year class reunion, doing 70mph in the carpool lane of I-5 South, just south of 520. Some guy cuts me off, and I hit the brakes, and they feel really, really soft. About 5 seconds later, there's a loud bang, and the front driver's side of the rig dives into the ground. A rooster tail of sparks shoots out from the wheel well, up over the window beside me, and behind me I watch my new tire and rim bounce off the guard wall, and lay down in the middle of the lane. The caliper ripped off in the midst of the carnage, so I had no real brakes, either.

We (the wife, the hoe, and I) swerved across several lanes while I tried to keep us off the wall or from going sideways and rolling over, all without brakes to speak of, while grinding to a stop. Somehow we didn't hit anyone, or the wall, nor roll over- neither me, the state troopers, nor the DOT response rig drivers can figure out why not.

Still not really sure what went wrong, but I'm going to guess I didn't tighten the hub nut down tight enough on that side after putting a new half shaft in. Although I don't usually mess up something so simple. It has me second guessing myself now.

The hoe is up on blocks at the dad-in-law's. While we were at it, with the front end ripped out, we dropped a new (from the local wrecking yard) front diff with 3.73 gears in it to match the rear. Why not, right? At least I'm not making payments on this thing too.


Pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=32442&id=1212534274&l=6d34382cec

 

[JKmotorsports]

Sounds like a wild ride, man. At least no one was hurt. Isn't there a cotter pin and castle nut holding it on to keep it from backing out?

 

[ravingmadman]

Sounds like a wild ride, man. At least no one was hurt. Isn't there a cotter pin and castle nut holding it on to keep it from backing out?

Nope. Just 200 ft/lbs of torque, and a hubcap if it counts....

 

[haks310]

Fucken A!

 

[bowtiefreak]

damn, that is nuts. Glad you are alright. The last tie my adad raced at summit point I beleive the axle in the 10bolt broke and the right rear wheel came off at 100+, didn't hit a thing, no one knows how he didn't

 

[96ProCompTahoe]

Thats crazy! good noone got hurt. how much other damage did it do to the truck with the slide?

 

[BOSS]

Wholly Christ and I thought my stories of cars and people were crazy. Bad luck comes in 3's bro, stay indoors for a while and put up the sharp objects.


B

 

[ravingmadman]

The disk broke (as you can see from the pictures) and ripped the caliper off. While ripping the caliper off, it sheared the caliper bolts off, and bent the arms that hold the caliper to the spindle. While shearing those bolts, it bent the upper control arm. The hub's seen better days as well. The lower ball joint was ground into the pavement, but it doesn't appear that the lower control arm was damaged. Just nicely polished on the underside. The half shaft and tire is fine too.

I found an upper control arm with bushings and a good ball joint and a spindle/hub/disk/caliper assembly at the local wrecking yard for $100. I got the lower ball joint for $30 at Napa (over priced, IMHO) and they pressed it for me for another $32. The caliper stabbed through my nice new rim, which has gone up in price to $90. So add alignment to it for another $60, and I'm still not looking too bad, having done all the work with the aid of my father-in-law. The diff cost $300, but I can't count that as part of this adventure.

 

[Modded]

Wow dude I would have freaked.....good thing you'll are ok.
A guy with a Hybrid NNBS (cant remember his name for some reason) had an experience like this from DiscountTire not torquing the lugs correctly.

Surprised the bumper didn't et messed up?

 

[Bad bow tie]

Holy shit that is nuts. What's weird is didn't someone predict that the wheel would fall off on the freeway when you were taking bets to what was going to break next?