While driving to work this morning, I witnessed a new S Class (probably a 550) lose it's rear-driver-side wheel. I mean it just came right off. The car was about 100 yards away from me on the right lane (4-5 lane highway) and I was on the number 2 lane. Sparks was flying, the runaway wheel was going left and the car was pulling right to the shoulder. I actually was driving next to the wheel when it hit the left side guard rails.. kinda funny because it was still rolling pretty fast!! Fortunately, the driver is OK, I'm sure, because he/she didn't hit anything while pulling over. Probably rattled by the whole situation though.
Brand new S Class! Wow! What would cause this?? Did someone loosen the wheel bolts or something?
Could be a case of someone tried to steal the wheels and got spooked before finishing the job. A similar thing happened to a guy here at work, but luckily he noticed a couple missing lug nuts laying on the ground before he drove away.
we had a mechanic forget to torque the wheels down once, and by the time we swung around back to the shop, the wheels had almost fallen off. we thought it was just bad alignment (front wheel drive car) until they put the car on the lift and all 4 wheels were drooping down.
BTW, i had a truck lose it's entire rear axle in front of me before...that was EXCITING....the wheel and axle spun around like a lopsided top on the freeeway!
I had new tires put a truck once and it was close to going home time so needless to say they forget to tighten one down good. Got about 1/4 mile away and the whole thing started shaking so I pulled over to discover the problem before it came off. Manager wasn't too happy when I went back and told what happened.
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