Saw a wheel come off today.

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Jun 5, 2003
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Location
Apple Valley, California
We went to Barstow,Ca for lunch and to shop at the outlet mall. On our way NB I-15 I saw a tire rolling along in the center divider. Then I saw a white Ford van with it's LF corner on the hwy @60 mph of so . I watched them pull off onto the shoulder safely.

No reason for me to stop and try to cross 8 lanes of traffic. There was lots of Vegas traffic on his side.

Did our thing then headed home. The tow truck was just pulling up to the van. The loose wheel was laying against it with the caliper and rotor still bolted to it.

I also noticed the spindle and part of a bearing cage still on it. No idea how the caliper came off too.

I can't believe they didn't hear the bearings growling for the last 100+ miles and let it get so bad that the wheel fell off.

Pretty warm day to be stuck out in the desert too.

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Not first hand, but I had a buddy that had a then new S55 AMG that was tooling down I85 in near Atlanta when a loose wheel and tire came bouncing at him, bounced over the hood and hit the car right at the junction of the windshield glass and the panoramic sunroof, destroying the roof and windshield header. He was VERY lucky. Wrong bounce and it would have probably killed him. No one else was hit by it thankfully.

Being a brand new car I forget how long he spent waiting for RBM to fix it. Think it was something like 6-8 months waiting on parts.

He believes the wheel came off a trailer in front of him. Never found out though, they kept on going.
 
A friend bought a Mercedes 190E demonstrator. Not long afterwards a front wheel came off while at speed. Turns out that corner had been injured and then repaired using aftermarket parts. Strange for a nearly new demonstrator but that's what it was. He insisted it be repaired using Mercedes OEM parts. A couple of years later, the same wheel came off again. He was not impressed and moved on to Subarus.

Some years later we were looking for a second car. We saw an ad for a 190E. We went to look at it. Nice people and a lovely car. For no particular reason I asked if a wheel had ever fallen off. "How did you know?" the lady asked. One of the front wheels had fallen off a few weeks earlier. We didn't buy it.
 
68 right now in Columbus, OH and raining. I'm a semi truck mechanic. The trailer side had two wheels come off since I've been with my employer.


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For a while I would see about 1 minivan like vehicle driving through town on the metal rotor sparks flying

Fords and Dodges seemed to have trouble holding onto wheel ends
 
I was towing my boat down to southern MO in the right lane of a divided highway. The front left of a Silverado coming in the opposite direction came off, crossed the median, and passed me and the boat in the passing lane of my side of the highway, continued into my lane, then into the ditch...scary!
 
For a while I would see about 1 minivan like vehicle driving through town on the metal rotor sparks flying

Fords and Dodges seemed to have trouble holding onto wheel ends

I wonder if it’s simply they are more likely to accumulate a lot of highway miles while heavily loaded hence the wheels coming off?

Although I suspect most wheel come off incidents are related to lug studs or nuts.
 
Some years back I was on the freeway in my Toyota MR2 doing about 70 MPH and saw a tire that had come off of a trailer rolling back in my direction a couple hundred yards ahead. That isn't much space when you are doing freeway speeds. Knowing that the tire could change direction at any time I waited until close and then made an evasive maneuver. Scared the H-E-Double Toothpicks out of me.

A guy was killed on the I-5 freeway near Del Mar a few years ago when a tire came off of a vehicle on the other side of the freeway, jumped right over the concrete barrier and went through his windshield.

Gotta keep alert at all times folks.
 
Seen a wheel come off the rear of an old hilux once, it overtook the truck and scooted across 3 lanes into or through a hedge. That was just the result of poor tightening though, all other parts were still on the rear axle.
 
In fast rush-hour traffic I saw a tow truck with a vehicle behind which had had the third member removed. The wheel, drum and axle from one side were bouncing all over and amongst cars. If it didn't spear someone through their windshield it was a miracle.

I also saw a trailer dual wheel come off a semi. It was on the highway late at night and shot sparks for miles before it came off and bounced across between the side barriers. No way the driver could not have known.
 
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