WandaRunner
New member
Hi all, I am a long time stalker of the forum, decided to join recently because I want to share a major mistake I made in hopes others will not make the same mistake.
A couple of months ago my wheel came off while driving south on the I-10 from PHX to Tucson, I was going about 75mph, felt the entire car shudder and immediately made a b-line for the offramp. As I am slowing down coming off the freeway the car lurches forward and I watch as the passenger side front tire and wheel fly across 4 lanes of traffic in front of me. Being the idiot that I am I though, "dang, thats a sweet looking wheel and tire set...oh wait....thats the same wheel and tire set I have...ohhhh, thats my wheel and tire."
Most important outcome of this accident was that no one was hurt and no one elses property was damaged apart from my own.
After several investigations by two major insurance companies and two toyota dealerships, the cause of failure was that all lug nuts snapped clean off due to improper torque, I was running 1" spacers at the time, but the spacers and spacer lugs stayed bolted to the wheel with no sign of spacer failure (multiple engineers from Toyota and insurance companies confirmed that while the spacers place added leverage force on the factory lug nuts, the factory lug nuts would have failed either way due to improper torque applied, the factory lugnuts were seriously under-torqued).
Just a couple of days before the accident I had a local offroad shop in Mesa, AZ, put on new wheels and tire, work on clearance issues, firewall tubing, welding sliders, bodylift, etc. The night I picked up my car they were bolting the wheels on in the parking lot with a hand drill and rushing to finish up. I should have checked the torque on my own wheels/ made the shop torque to spec with proper equipment. This was my mistake.
The moral of this post is twofold: 1) choose an honest company with a good reputation to work on your car, saving a few dollars is not worth your safety 2) if you do work on your car yourself, great, if not, keep an eye on what has been done and dont be afraid to check it yourself or have another professional check it out.
Stay safe everybody and enjoy you rigs.
-Tyler
A couple of months ago my wheel came off while driving south on the I-10 from PHX to Tucson, I was going about 75mph, felt the entire car shudder and immediately made a b-line for the offramp. As I am slowing down coming off the freeway the car lurches forward and I watch as the passenger side front tire and wheel fly across 4 lanes of traffic in front of me. Being the idiot that I am I though, "dang, thats a sweet looking wheel and tire set...oh wait....thats the same wheel and tire set I have...ohhhh, thats my wheel and tire."
Most important outcome of this accident was that no one was hurt and no one elses property was damaged apart from my own.
After several investigations by two major insurance companies and two toyota dealerships, the cause of failure was that all lug nuts snapped clean off due to improper torque, I was running 1" spacers at the time, but the spacers and spacer lugs stayed bolted to the wheel with no sign of spacer failure (multiple engineers from Toyota and insurance companies confirmed that while the spacers place added leverage force on the factory lug nuts, the factory lug nuts would have failed either way due to improper torque applied, the factory lugnuts were seriously under-torqued).
Just a couple of days before the accident I had a local offroad shop in Mesa, AZ, put on new wheels and tire, work on clearance issues, firewall tubing, welding sliders, bodylift, etc. The night I picked up my car they were bolting the wheels on in the parking lot with a hand drill and rushing to finish up. I should have checked the torque on my own wheels/ made the shop torque to spec with proper equipment. This was my mistake.
The moral of this post is twofold: 1) choose an honest company with a good reputation to work on your car, saving a few dollars is not worth your safety 2) if you do work on your car yourself, great, if not, keep an eye on what has been done and dont be afraid to check it yourself or have another professional check it out.
Stay safe everybody and enjoy you rigs.
-Tyler
