Was driving home at about 2:30 last night, in the slow lane. Steering wheel was shaking a lot more than normal. Its been shaking some due to bad wheel bearing on the front driver side.

I was about 10 mins from home doing 43mph, and all of a sudden I saw my wheel flying forward (front passenger wheel), and the car drop on that side and sparks shooting. I'm still shocked that I didnt really panic at all. I put the hazards on, while pumping the brakes (my abs light has been on), then shifting to neutral while pullin to the shoulder (which was really a bike lane).

Car was sitting on the spindle, and if you thought it was hard to jack up your car on stock suspension when its sitting on the spindle, try when its on D2's and riding pretty low. Fortunately from so much experience I knew to jack up the car from the rear, which lifted the front more then enough for me to put the wheel on the only two remaining wheels studs, and take a couple lugs from the rear wheels. 15 mins later from the time the wheel flew off, the wheel was back on, bolted down tight, and drove home with hazards on doing about 25mph.

Thank god, that whole incident could have went a whole other route, but I was blessed and able to get the car back up and home rather quickly.

Going out in 5 mins to look at the car, but already I know there is no body damage, driving home the car felt solid. The sparks I saw shooting out (not much) was the rotor splash shield scraping the ground. So my pre-assessment is that I need to replace some wheel studs and thats all.

PSA: make sure you lugs are on tight, if you feel an odd vibration, and you feel it getting worse by the minute, pull over and check it out, in a nicely lit area ( I had no light)

 

Wow, that's scary, that's why I always check and double-check my lug nut torque. I just don't want to think about a wheel falling off, especially at high speed. I assume you didn't have the lug nuts torqued to 80 ft-lbs?

Glad you're OK. Hope there wasn't too much damage.

 

thanks. Actually they were torqued down to spec.

 

I've never had a properly torqued lug nut loosen on its own. Glad that you did not sustain any major damage to your nice ride.

 

Did you check them a second time after putting the wheels on the last time? You're supposed to check 500 miles after installing the wheel because sometimes the lug nuts will loosen up. Or maybe you have bad threads on the studs?

 

Next time, just turn really, really hard to the right if your left wheel fall off.


Glad it didn't do any damage. Same thing happened to my dad once. Went back the next day and found the tire with the hubcap still on it and all the lug nuts still under under the cap! It was a POS old skool 1980's beater work car. He got home on the spare and stole a nut off each of the other three tires.

 

glad it didn't do any damage!!

 

Glad that there isnt much damage and your ok. Im gonna check my lugs now.

 

**** man. I'm glad to see you kept a cool head.

 

Almost the same thing happened to me while on a road trip. Instead I was doing about 85. The steering wheel was vibrating for about 15 miles, and I had no idea why. I was with a friend when he said to just stop, it was crazy how he said to just stop, almost as if someone told him or he preplanned this. So we pull over and the driver side front wheel was being held on with all the lugs tightened only about 2 or 3 threads each. This could have gone an entirely different route as well, but glad nothing serious happened. Ever since then, I check my lugs periodically.

 

85 is the lucky number. Use a tq stick which will do it to 80 and then hand tq them to 85.

 

Yeah I do 85 ft-lbs myself, just using a $10 torque wrench, which serves me well.

 

Good to hear everything is well man. That car isn't giving you any breaks lately!!!

 

good thing there wasn't much damage. The lugnuts can loosen quite a bit sometimes if they are going bad. I always make sure I check them before I go out.

 

good thing it didn't happen on the freeway.

 

Wow lucky you for not getting hurt or your max not sustaining any major damages. I had a similar problem but not as bad as others or you. I was doing something and One lug was totally missing. Lucky the other four were still on tight. Now I check all my wheels for any missing or loosen lugs.

 

wow that is pretty unlikely for all 4 to come off during slow driving and you would have really felt it way before.. so i don't know.

pics of the damage to the knuckle since i don't think we've had this documented in a maxima with photos yet

i do mine by hand, like my oil filter. when it feels tight, it's tight.

 

Thanks all for the concerns, and it was crazy and I'm still a little shocked that I didnt panic or anything, its kind of weird

Fr33way: She sure isnt giving me a brake lately I'm determined, going to replaced some more worn out parts and get some new parts on and I'm sure she'll feel like a champ again

Damage Report:
One of the lugs must have gotten enough force to push it off of the wheel stud. I was able the pull off a coiling wire that used to be inside of the lug nut. Two other wheels studs snapped toward the base (where i believe its stronger than towards the edge!). 4th I have no clue, and I already had one bad wheel stud so that wasnt on. I'm a bit baffled on how I could have generated enough force to shoot off a lug, and snap the two wheel studs.

Took off the front wheel, caliper, torque member, and rotor. Banged out the two stumpy broken lugs. The rotor took some serious scraping but on the outer edge, It definately needs replacing and makes me glad I have some Z rotors in my room waiting to get milled down to pair with J30 calipers Bottom of the control arm has some scrapes but just cosmetic, Worst part was I saw a dent in my fender, I dont know if I'll be able to bend or shape it back, it was hardly noticable excpet for the paint that was missing.

So all in all, A new passenger side fener, and new wheel studs is the extent of the damage.

She's very much drivable (had to drive to work today), so I'm still quite lucky it didnt go another way, or I having to dish out loads of money to get her working or fixed.

If it was on the freeway, i'm sure I would have broken the spindle or shot off the rotor, brakes screwed up, maan. I was on the freeway too but not for too long and got off at my exit. Then 5 mins after getting off of the freeway, wheel desides to go flying!

 

i see you didnt mention anything about replacing the wheel bearing.

 

The wheel bearing was on the driver side, I'm going to pick up a whole new spindle for the driver side when I get my paycheck. I have a new driver side control arm to go on, but I need to order the passenger side also, and might as well do the bushings etc while I'm in there.

so much to fix, not enough money . . .

 

man I am sorry to hear that atleast you and ur max love made it out kewl.Just be thankful it wasnt you and the fam or a bunch of friends when the s#!% hit the fan!!! Just do what you need to NOW !!!! everything else will kinda fall in place.

 

glad to hear you are ok man. that is scary!

 

I have reason to believe my bad alignment is the source of all my troubles lately. Due to unfortunate circumstances, I am forced to wait until I'm able to get an alignment.
thanks, it was so odd to see my wheel flying down the road, THEN the car dropped and skidded
Yea I'm not waiting, as soon as funds touch my hands, parts are getting bought and put on.

 

Had it almost happen to me before. I didn't tighten the nuts tight enough when I was swapping wheels.

 

the off thing, was the lugs were tigned, this isnt a case of last time I worked on the car I forgot to tighten the lugs. This is a case of some how enough force was generated (or build up . . . ) to strip a lug and its threads off the stud, and snap 2 others at their base.

I have a line up of suspects.

 

Just bought a torque wrench to ensure all lugs are tight to spec on all cars in the fam.

MDeezy glad you were safe and knew how to get out of the situation. Glad you are okay.

One time I had my drive fr wheel off to spray down some bushings because of squeaking, well i forgot to torque down the bolts after putting the car down off the jack. Then i drove it 20 miles finally when i got on the highway and was going about 85 there was a bad shake, pulled over and noticed all my lugs were loose!!!!!!

 

I actually forgot to tighten my lugs completely after working on my car (can't remember what I was doing, but had my driverside wheel off). Long story short - drove about 20 minutes with this vibration, and then pulled off the road. As soon as I got to my driverside rim, I knew what I had done. Got the lug wrench out, and tightened them down. Never again will that happen, I check my lugs about three times everytime I put the wheel back on.

 

From my experiences with broken studs and launching parts, here's my guess at what happened:

1 missing wheel stud caused small vibrations in the wheel due to it not sitting perfectly flush. this caused lug #2 and #3 to start backing off.
once studs #2,3 started backing off, the wheel wobbled bad enough that studs #4 and 5 fatigued and snapped.

it could have also easily been the other way around.. studs 4 and 5 snapped due to old age and fatigue, THEN the others backed off due to vibrations.

I've seen both happen... the only way to have prevented this is to replace your wheel studs every few years if you work on your cars like I do.... I replace my studs every year because of all the track use and on/off of my wheels. they're the most stressed bolts on the entire car other than rod bolts, and they're the ones that are going to fail the worst and make the ugliest wreck.

just thank your superiors that nobody was injured and a bent fender and brake rotor are all the damage you did. (I had even more damage than that a year ago when I dropped a wheel off my 240SX at 10mph.)

 

I almost did the same on my Triumph....felt the wheel banging while going 70mph....pulled over FAST. Ended up with one stud broken off, another one bent, and the other two lugnuts just barely on (TR's have 4 lugs)....managed to bang the bent one out on the spot and limp 1/2 a mile to a gas station on 2 lugs at 5mph....

VERY scary, and this was on a BACK wheel....front wheel coming off is no fun, I'm sure.

 

Wow, more wisdom from Matt. I never thought about replacing the studs.

I think I'm going to order 10 new studs for my front wheels. I'll just get OEM unless someone has a better recommendation. The rears have new H&R studs that came with my 15mm spacers.

 

safety wire lols

 

dealership sells wheel studs @ $3 a piece.

One stud on my car was brand new and it snapped! It may have been an inferrior quality.

 

That seems like a HUGE pain to undo 5 tiny wires everytime you need to take the wheel off.

 

I did some research and Maxima wheel studs (at least for the front) are part no. 43222-70T00.

www.worldpartsexpress.com has these OEM Nissan studs for $1.31 each. $13.10 plus shipping for two wheels' worth versus about $30 at the dealer.