Wheel almost fell off while driving…help

Hi all, hoping to get some input on a weird situation that happened this week. Husband was driving our truck home on Thursday and the wheel almost fell off after he crossed some rail tracks (set into ground, just a small bump). He got out and picked up the lug nuts and thankfully made it home. There was just 1 nut holding the tire on and the 2nd bolt had broken off inside the wheel. Needless to say the wheel is messed up. The bolt dug into the aluminum wheel and the rest of the lug nuts won’t tighten down properly. Additionally 2 other tires had loose nuts as well after inspecting them.

We got an alignment at the end of March at Les Schwab after getting some front end work done, the manager said they did not have to touch our tires to do it. However I’m having a hard time understanding how 3 tires could have loose nuts all of a sudden. Is there anything that could cause this? Our buddy did the front end work and we can’t really imagine him not tightening things down. After we got the truck back it felt good driving it over to get aligned, after the alignment it felt like the steering was a lot looser / worse.

For context the truck is my husbands daily driver, about 8-12 miles a day for work. We did haul a small load of fence posts and some concrete in the bed over the weekend but that couldn’t of been more than 400 lbs for a 1/2 ton truck…

Now that the wheel is messed up we will have to haul it somewhere to get it fixed. Photo is from when we got it home, you can see the final lug plus the one that broke off inside.

Hoping to get some feedback or any ideas of what could’ve caused this. Thanks all, I appreciate any help!

Spookee said:

Hi all, hoping to get some input on a weird situation that happened this week. Husband was driving our truck home on Thursday and the wheel almost fell off after he crossed some rail tracks (set into ground, just a small bump). He got out and picked up the lug nuts and thankfully made it home. There was just 1 nut holding the tire on and the 2nd bolt had broken off inside the wheel. Needless to say the wheel is messed up. The bolt dug into the aluminum wheel and the rest of the lug nuts won’t tighten down properly. Additionally 2 other tires had loose nuts as well after inspecting them.

We got an alignment at the end of March at Les Schwab after getting some front end work done, the manager said they did not have to touch our tires to do it. However I’m having a hard time understanding how 3 tires could have loose nuts all of a sudden. Is there anything that could cause this? Our buddy did the front end work and we can’t really imagine him not tightening things down. After we got the truck back it felt good driving it over to get aligned, after the alignment it felt like the steering was a lot looser / worse.

For context the truck is my husbands daily driver, about 8-12 miles a day for work. We did haul a small load of fence posts and some concrete in the bed over the weekend but that couldn’t of been more than 400 lbs for a 1/2 ton truck…

Now that the wheel is messed up we will have to haul it somewhere to get it fixed. Photo is from when we got it home, you can see the final lug plus the one that broke off inside.

Hoping to get some feedback or any ideas of what could’ve caused this. Thanks all, I appreciate any help!

Click to expand...

The only thing it could be is someone not tightening them down enough or someone came along and loosened them at some point. There's getting to be more and more shady stuff going on around here and I wouldn't be totally surprised if someone tried to steal the wheels and got interrupted half way through. You are supposed to recheck the lug nut torque after the first 20-50 miles after you have had them loose, so if that was never done and it wasn't torqued right to begin with... they could have just been backing out slowly over time.

I also wouldn't be surprised if Les Schwab screwed it up. I have been getting less and less happy with them every time we use them. I got new wheels on our suburban a few years ago and had a recurring vibration. Kept taking it back to the store we bought them at and it never got better. Finally got fed up and took it to another one on the other side of town and within 3 minutes of pulling it in the tech found they had installed a defective tire that was out of round.

Every time my wife takes her car over to them to get the free tire rotation and balance they overinflate the tires and then forget to reset the TPMS sensors to correlate to the new tire position after rotation.

I was thinking someone loosened them, or they backed out.

I have only had it happen one time, and even then the lugnuts stayed on. How, I don't know. I had just got the truck done after swapping in disc brakes, and tightened the lugs with a star wrench like I always have. I had got the front end aligned that morning and was on my way to mom and pop's for thanksgiving, about 24 miles away from home the truck started making a horrible sound. Pulled over, looked underneath with the engine running, nothing. Start driving again, it happened again. Go up further to an area where I could turn around, this was on a two lane mountain road, and drove down. It made all kinds of racket on the way home. The next day I went out and all 8 lugs had backed out, so it was the rim flopping on the studs.

I don't have any experience with Les Schwab, but I thought they were supposed to be a reputable establishment. But then again it's difficult finding good shops nowadays.

Unless overloaded or abused properly torqued lug nuts do not fall off. That said, GM used hub centric wheels from the factory. Many aftermarket wheels are designed to fit other brands with larger centers. Thus, they are not hub centric on GM. Just something to think about.

Should be 100 FT LBS for aluminum rims I check mine about 50 or 60 miles after a tire rotation

Holy cow. Thats crazy

Hard to tell from your picture. Possibly the wrong lug nuts for those aftermarket wheels?

They are very large tires with a lot of offset for a half ton truck.

Aluminum wheels usually need retorqued sometimes because there soft. Or your lugs are a little too small. Maybe needs a bigger acorn. Just my thoughts.
I've had a wheel come off before a couple times.
Once it was because I found some spare lugs and they even torqued up good like normal so i didn't think anything of it and they all fell off in just a few miles. Turns out they were metric and still went on and tightened up. I should have noticed something right off but was probably in a hurry and it was my own rig.

How many threads are/were engaged? Thicker center on that style wheel.

Spacers?

How many miles on that setup before the last 2 times it was worked on?
And there would be no need to remove the front wheels for an alignment and no need to remove the rear wheels for either repair, so if 3 wheels were loose, at least 1 was rear tire.
If the truck is new to you, could be wrong lug nuts or??
But if you drive it daily for 2 months fine as well as prior to the repairs and then they comes loose, someone probably loosened them.

Thanks so much everyone for your information! This forum is always super helpful and I really appreciate how quickly you all respond I am hoping that the lugs just backed out/were wrong/ there was an underlying issue because it’s pretty scary to imagine someone randomly being malicious and sabotaging a vehicle!
Anyways update is that ‘problem child’ got towed today over to our buddy’s so we can hopefully get the wheel fixed and the issue resolved

Ya I hope you’re right. And to my previous post, it would be very odd that someone messed with your truck. If you’re pretty confident that didn’t happen then the common thread is likely the rims?
Not a lot of reasons 3 out of 4 wheels could come loose.
Super cool truck though!

Back in the early 90s my family was going to Oklahoma for a swap meet trip over a long weekend. We had our '79 Burb, basic C10, 350/350/3.08 12 bolt, brown metallic and cream, still had the while wheels and dog dish caps and cheap tires.
On the way up from Houston, had a blowout on the right rear, having a load in the truck and the trailer on the back prolly kept us from really getting messed up. Bought a tire at Western Auto in Corsicana, went on down the road. Continued the trip, got around Ardmore and had another flat on the left rear. Bought another tire at that Western Auto, went on to Chicasha for the meet. Coming home it got really cold, and we stopped at a truck stop and restaurant in Ardmore for dinner. Apparently someone must've messed with the rear lug nuts on the Burb, because coming out of Dallas we had a vibration from the rear of the Burb. I-45 was undergoing a lot of construction and repaving so the surface wasn't good, and initially we thought that's what it was. Pulled off on the service road near Ennis and checked the truck. Left rear wheel had three of five studs broken off, and the other two weren't in much better shape. Our trailer used similar studs so we took one off each of its wheels and replaced the broken off ones. Limped our rig into Ennis and got a motel next door to the Chevy dealership. Mind you, this is Sunday night/early Monday morning, in November and it's around 40° and we're doing all this with hand tools and a small jack, by flashlight!
Went to the Chevy dealership parts department and they were practically out of the studs and nuts. The parts store in town had a few; between the two, we got enough to put the truck right and get home on the spare as the wheel was ruined.
We never knew if someone tampered with the truck or if the bad pavement was the cause...but it's a night I won't forget. Thankfully Dad could figure out what to do with what we had available to us, to get things sorted out. I did help him a fair bit.
My memory is a little spotty, but I think in the next year we did end up replacing the rear axle bearings and seals. I know we had to on the '84 Burb, when one of them burned up on the way outta Houston to another meet in the DFW area. We didn't make that one; worked on getting back across town to home, and fixing the truck....those bearings came out in multiple melted pieces, but that truck had a 10 bolt in it.