saved by the noise....

[97tbird]

Last night, driving home from work, i heard this weird grinding, rotational noise from the front passenger side, at low speeds especially. the noise went away after a while, b ut then this morning it started doing it again, pretty bad.

took car to a nearby shop, and they found all of the lug nuts on BOTH front wheels so loose, they could move it with fingers

They said it's a wonder the wheels didn't come off during my previous night's 65-70 mph drive for about an hr...I was lucky.

They found it weird that lug-nuts on both wheels had the problem at the same time, and kept asking me if i had any enemies...

The last time i had my wheels handled was when i got the new brake rotors about an yr ago.

 

[integrare]

Lucky

Do you have any enemies?

 

[seotaji]

yep, either they weren't torqued correctly (or retorqued) or you have enemies.

 

[55Test]

I had a set of lugnuts come loose one me one time, I had a set of aluminum rims on my car at the time and I had removed the tire in the morning to chance a rear shock, I put the tire back on and went for a drive. Later on the day I heard a rumbling noise that sounded like a helicopter. It got bad enough that I had to stop to find out what was going on. Turns out 4 of the 5 lugnuts had come loose enough that I could twirl them with my fingers.

 

[97tbird]

well...i'd like to think they weren't torqued correctly.
afak I don't have any enemies...

 

[MAJA]

Are you married, and do you have a big life insurance policy for your spouse? (Dont laugh, stranger things have happened!)

 

[benjamming]

Remember that after a wheel is put back on, the lug nuts should be retorqued after 25-50 miles of driving. Was that ever done?

 

[TooManyWheels]

On a related note which may or may not apply to your situation, I have noticed that tire shops commonly delay torquing lug nuts until after they have already applied the weight of the car onto the wheel. Some of that force obviously translates into the horizontal dimension, thereby offsetting the actual tightness of the lug against the hub. Whether it is significant as a practical matter I don't know, but I still wonder.

I do know that in extreme cases it makes a difference. I had a college roommate whose car fell off the jack in the interval between installing the wheel onto the studs and tightening the lugs. Rather than taking the load off the wheel, he proceeded to tighten the lugs with the wheel in a bind. A couple of months later, that same wheel broke away from the center during an autocross event.

 

[Schmoe]

OR they weren't put on very tight and it got warm one day and then cold the next. Thermal expansion could have generally loosened them enough so that with the force of driving, they worked themselves free.

 

[rpn453]

quote:

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Originally posted by Schmoe:
OR they weren't put on very tight and it got warm one day and then cold the next. Thermal expansion could have generally loosened them enough so that with the force of driving, they worked themselves free.

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That's probably it. It's also possible that they were overtorqued, and the studs were plastically deformed a little.

 

[JohnBrowning]

Someone wanted your wheels!! Probably some crack head around your campus or someone with a sick sense of humor that it would be a funy prank!