Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General General Wheel fell off!

Same thing happend to Kevdogg on the boards. He was on the highway doing 70mph, getting off the highway he feels a shake, and the wheel flies off! Stock E1 wheel.

Mark

I think with alloy wheels, you are supposed to re-torque them after every few thousand miles.

Sears also puts a note on the receipt that "All lug nuts on custom and alloy wheels must be re-torqued after 25 miles and checked periodically."

They snapped off?! [censored] man.

I remember when I started hearing a grinding noise go on under braking and turning.. eventually turned into constant rubbing I got out and checked and my lug nuts were ready to come off. They unscrewed themselves

Over torqued lug nuts = broken studs.

ALWAYS use a torque wrench.

Did your damage look anything like this?

Click for pics of snapped studs

BTW - $1500 was the estimate the dealer gave me too. Screw that - to get it driveable was only $165. Another $500 to replace/repaint the fender though.

akrump - yeah that's about it, but my fender took much more of a beating and I pretty much toasted the rocker molding.

Insurance adjuster going to check it out on Monday.

AL

Update-
Bottom line is $1200+ to fix.
New fender, rocker molding, rotor, repair scuffed up corner of bumper cover. Paint and blend to hood.
Interesting that insurance co. says that they don't pay for the 'cause', only for the results - so they are not paying $8 to replace the loose lug nuts that were judged to be the cause

So it'll be $500 out of pocket for the deductible - could have been worse.

AL

Possibly another reason wheels were switched from E0's to E1's?

I havent heard of this happening with anything but E0's

Two of my wheel studs sheared off while driving my SVT (with "E1's") when I was going 100km/h. Fortuantly when the first came off it started making a really loud noise kinda like a bearing, and I pulled over. Found the second lugnut and stud sitting by the drivers door when I got out to check what was wrong.