So yesterday I was headed off to work and as I got near my office There was a bit of a shudder, a loud clunk, the sound of tinkling metal down the hwy and a nice horrific grinding noise from the rear.  Thankfully I was only going about 20-30 at the time so I eased off the driving lanes.  I then got out and checked under the car expecting some broke suspension component or an exploded rear end.  But what I found was entirely more shocking.  Somehow all 5 lugs on my rear driver wheel had sheared off and my rotor was now resting on the inside of the rim.  I’m thinking if I didn’t have wide wheels that it probably would have gone flying.

As you can imagine it wasn’t getting driven anywhere more safe than the center lane of a hwy.  So quickly put in a call to my insurance provider to request a tow.  As I was getting off the phone a local city officer pulled up trying to help.  Unfortunately due to the circumstance of the wheel, there was just no helping it.  I told him that my wrecker was on the way but he wasn’t happy about the time estimate of an hour that I was given.  He assured me that he was there to help me and that he would stay as long as needed but continuously asked for updates on the wrecker and began to get impatient near the hour mark that I was quotes.  I called the insurance back and they got in touch with the driver and he assured them he would be there no more than another 15 minutes.  That came and went with no truck.  The officer was visibly agitated at this point and pretty much insisted on calling their own wrecker so I told him go ahead.  Fortunately my free roadside assistance one showed up before his did and I got all loaded up and taken to a local shop a couple miles away.

I explained the situation to them and they promised to get it on the rack to inspect shortly.  Well, that shortly ended up being about 3 hours before they gave me a call.  The wheel was ok other than dings and scratches but the studs, nuts and labor was going to run me $200.  And he wanted to do my brakes for another $105.  The rotor was nearly undamaged and just needed a deburring on the edge.  Told him negatory on the pads but got bent over on the studs and nuts.  But I needed a speedy repair while I was at the office so I gave the go ahead.  So now I am riding around on a fugly rim with mis-matched lugs.  I will end up replacing it later down the road but not anytime soon.

Here is a quick shot of one of the dings in the outer rim, there are several around the wheel where I assume the broken stud pieces impacted the wheel after shearing.

And here is a closeup of the kind of damage the inner rim suffered because of the rotor and caliper grinding against it.

All other wheels checked out find.  The only plausible theory we could come up with is some kid snuck into my garage while I wasn’t looking and thought it would be funny to loosen the lugs.  And once they vibrated loose enough riding on the studs broke them all off.  I am lucky this didn’t happen booking down the interstate at 70-80mph in traffic like I was not more than 5 minutes before it happened.