Wheel comes off during driving

[Zolt99]

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E121831.jpgApproximately three weeks ago I had my tires and rims swapped with another used set at a local tire shop. About 4-5 days ago I started feeling a slight vibration in my steering wheel when driving and a little bit of road wonder. Yesterday the vibration increased a little more and I started hearing a slight ticking coming from the rear of the truck. Suddenly I felt the rear of my truck to start fishtailing severely so I pulled over to the side of the road. When I went to the back of the truck I noticed that the rear driver side wheel was sitting on an angle and all the lug nuts were gone. As I touched the wheel, it just came off the hub and the rear of the truck just dipped down. I noticed that the rim stud holes were chamfered and damaged now. I am assuming (??) it was from the friction with the lug nuts as they became loose. I attached some pictures.

Does anyone have any suggestions/theories as to what happened here?

[Crvett69]

i would check all the other lug nuts on the vehicle and make sure they are tight. if its a aluminum mag they usually give you a paper that tells you to check them after 50 miles. also possible they didn't tighten them to right torque

[shorod]

Yep, the above comments are correct. I doubt you have much recourse with the shop though, especially if they provided you with a work order that has a note to come back in 50 (or 100, etc.) miles to have the lugnuts re-torqued. Unless you can demonstrate that you did not have that amount of miles on the truck since they installed the wheels.

Additionally, since you noticed something unusual but continued to drive the truck without inspecting for the issue, you likely allowed more damage to occur than if you had inspected for the issue immediately. This would be a good rule of thumb going forward.

I'm glad no one was hurt as a result of this issue.

-Rod

[Stealthee]

Consider this a lesson learned. You need to learn to listen to your vehicle when it is trying to tell you something is wrong. When you started feeling a vibration right after having tires mounted that should have told you to look at the tires and wheels. You ignored it and acted like all was well. The end result was a damaged wheel and being stuck on the side of the road.