INSANE Day!

Ok so I was cruising the mountain trails with a bunch of friends here in Durango, Colorado. On the way back home once we hit pavement, we stopped and aired up and tightened up lugnuts and a few odds and ends. We are cruising down Purgatory Ski Mountain pass at 65-70 jammin to music and stoked from an awesome day of wheeling. Out of nowhere my whole front driver side jumps to the ground. A second later I see my whole tire and wheel roll past me goin 70mph and start bouncing into oncoming traffic and it literally bounces over a car just barely missing it. Anyways my truck is grinding on the ground and I finally get it to stop down that steep mountain pass and get it off the road.
all the people behind me stopped and told me that after the wheel came off they saw nothing but sparks flying everywhere.

I went and walked down the pass about a half mile and finally find the tire in the ditch on the side of the mountain. I lost my hub and it ground my disc brake down to a flat edge, but enough that the pads still made contact all the way around and amazingly it still spun pretty freely. I find a stash of locking lugnuts that you use to keep your wheels from getting stolen and took one off my spare tire holder. Got the highlift out and put the tire back on. I took it slow for a while and the squeaking stopped after about a mile it was just smoothing out the ground down edges of the disc. I made it home and parked her for good till i can fix it this week

God was definitely watchin over me. I cant believe how calm I stayed throughout the whole incident and kept the truck under control. And holy cow that was a BIG drop with those 31's thank god they weren't my 35's.

Anyways i just had to tell someone haha

sooo what went wrong

We dont even know. Our group stopped and tightened the lugnuts not 30 min before that. I guess a big tube of loc-tight is in order. It looks like I need to replace the hub and get a new disc and pads. I just want to put a HP-D44 up front now even more.

And thats what was crazy... nothing really went wrong even though my odds were very low

Wow that is crazy, especially on a steep mountain pass. Im glad that everyone is ok.

For future reference: Lefty loosey, righty tighty.



Seriously though, glad to hear you're okay. That could have been a hell of a lot worse.

Get lock-nuts.......... most new, chrome lug-nut kits come with them... my Camaro's did.

I have seen a dodge lose it's wheel b4, after breaking 3 studs that held on the wheel because the wal-mart tire,jockies were complete tards and didn't torque down the wheels.

Congrats on not being dead and all.

Frank

Amen to God watching over you,I'm thankful for that also. Blue Loc tite works great for things like that. If I have it I use it on just about everything I put back together. It's great for bolts that go into aluminum also because it acts as an anti-sieze and you can still get it back apart if need be

DON'T use red or gold locktite. If you do, you may as well have the welded.

Putting it back together, check the hubs and bearings. They could have been cracked when they hit the ground. New brakes are in order up front.

Great to have you here to tell us about it.

the spindle could have gotten some damage as well from all the metal heating up

anything that gets greased there could use a really solid going over

I had a bunch of lugs get loose on me once. They were the acorn style chrome lugs and they were bottoming out on the studs when I put on the steel rims. They would feel tight, but not really be tight against the rim like they should. The aluminum rims were thicker at the lug holes. Almost lost the left front while wheeling. Got some normal lugs and no more issues.

I meant, lock washers...... it was early this morning. I run those on my vehicles that don't have tapered holes in the wheels.

Frank

I use open ended lug nut's now because I've has issues with that before. The alloy's on my F150 were aftermarket and had non stock lugnuts....sister borrowed the truck and got a flat, no biggy she swapped the spare on and off she went. I got the truck back a couple days later and was waiting until the weekend to get the original tire back as she left it at her house and I had the spare come loose and ended up in the ditch (saving the rotor) with 4 broken studs and a stripped steel wheel. The alloy wheel lug nuts weren't deep enough to properly secure a steel wheel

i had a problem with lugs on my 64. i put rally wheels on instead of the stockers with the hub caps. the lug nuts ground away at the rim and the rim popped right off over the nuts. when i got a new wheel i put the same style nut on and was having the same problem. my neighbor had racing lug nuts that were real wide. i put those on and never had a problem after that. the weird thing is i only had it happen on the right front.