Sometimes it's great to have friends

[Paul_Heery]

Earlier on today, I needed to go to the bank to get some cash for the weekend. The town that I live in is very small with no commercial operations (except for a pizza place). Anyway, to go to the bank I have to go to the next town over. And, to get there, the shortest way to go is a very nasty, narrow, twisting road that goes up a steep hill. It's not a fun road to drive, there are a lot of blind curves and quite a few potholes. I decided to take that road since I know it well and it is the fastest way.

Well, I get to the hill and start going up. Almost halfway up the hill, I hear a strange "thunk". I remember thinking to myself that this was not the place to stop and I should check the car when I get to the top of the hill. I go a little bit further then "Bam!". My left rear wheel had fallen off of the 914!

I got out of the car and said, "WTF" and a few other choice words. I looked down at my left rear rotor resting on the ground holding up the back of my car. In the rotor, there were no lug bolts, no remnents, nothing. Back down the hill about thirty yards sat my tire and wheel. I almost forgot, my rear fender got totally effed-up in this incident.

I'm standing there trying to figure out what to do. I could call AAA and have them send out a flatbed so I could get the thing home. Then, a light came on in my little brain. John (SummerSledSix) converted his car to a 911 front suspension and 5-bolt rears when he did his 6 conversion. Maybe he would have some of the old lug bolts from when he had 4-bolt wheels?

I gave him a call on my cell, explained my predicament and location, and he said that he would be right over. I stood there and waited. I do have to say that while I was waiting, I received numerous offers for help from passing motorists. One guy even offered to go get me a cold drink for the wait. Almost eveyone that offered help also said, "This is the worst possible place to break down".

In less than 10 minutes, John showed up. He brought with him the extra lug bolts, a floor jack, one of those round tools that insert into the jack point, and some tools. Right after John got there, a local police officer arrived and said, "This is the worst possible place to break down". However, the officer was pretty cool and stopped traffic when John and I were working on the 914.

It was a good thing that John had brought the insert for the jack point. When a 914 is resting on its rotor, it sits pretty low to the ground. We were on a pretty steep hill so we chocked the wheels with some pretty big rocks and some wood that John had. Within a couple of minutes, we had the tire bolted on with three of the new lug bolts. The fourth wouldn't go in, the thread got a little screwed up. We got the car to the top of the hill and into a school parking lot. There, with some other handy implements that John had brought along, we proceeded to pull out the rear fender which was slightly rubbing.

After this ordeal, I decided to head right home via a different route. I got the car in the garage and set forth to figure out what happened. There are no clues on the car as to what went wrong. Although, I do have some suspicions.

BTW, later on I still needed to get to the bank. I drove my Passat down the same route that I had taken with the 914. When I passed through the very busy intersection that is at the bottom of the hill, I thought that I noticed something. On the way back from the bank, I went ever slower through the intersection. Sitting there in the middle of the intersection was one of my lug bolts. I pulled over, got out of the car and ran over to get it. It was one of my bolts and it showed no signs of fatigue or failure.

Anybody have any idea what could have happened? I'm puzzled. I regularly check the torque and my lug bolts are always torqued to 108 lbs. (steel wheels). I didn't check the torque this morning and the last time I drove the car was Thursday. The car was unattended for a period of time on Thursday, that's why I have some nagging suspicions.

Sorry for the long missive, but I wanted to publicly thank John for coming to my rescue in my time of need. And, if anyone is passing through this part of the country and finds themselves in need of assistance, please feel free to contact me. If I can, I'll come running. I've got a pretty good stock of maintenance parts (and now some extra wheel bolts). My mobile phone is always on. (203) 417-1914

[kellzey]

Similar thing happened to a roommate driving back home to Dallas from college in Atlanta.

Cruising down Interstate 10 in his old Peugot (which means crap in French), he feels a sudden right/downward shift in his car. The next moment he notices one of his wheels rolling past him into the emergency lane and then off into a ditch.

He of course comes to a spark-filled stop and goes to inspect the damage. No wheel, no lug bolts, but rotor and brakes are intact. He retrieves his wheel 100 yards away in a field.

Okay... in the middle of Texas prarie country, no cell phone (this is in the 80s) and he has a wheel, but no way to attach it.

He thinks for awhile and decides to take one lugnut from each of the remaining three (4-bolt) wheels to bolt on the rogue wheel.

It gets him to the next major commercial area where he happens to find an autoparts store with bolts for his car.

Not the safest, but it worked.

Glad you were able to be resourceful and didn't get injured.

Regards,

Karl Ellzey
2001 Boxster
'75 914 1.8 (somewhere in transit from Arizona to Florida, why the F&@!#! is it taking so long!)

[Kevin Powers]

sounds as though checking the torque on our lug nuts should be part of regular maintenance.a light coating of grease on the acorn portion of the nut allows for correct readings. 914 owners are nice folk, how often do you gets offers from strangers to check out a car for you let alone drop what they are doing to bring you lug nuts and a jack?

kevin

[LarryP]

Wow. I tell you, this is getting scarier (read, "more interesting") and scarier. And I do not even have my car yet!

Thanks for the cell phone number Paul. And kudos, John.

[boxstr]

This iis the kind a camraderie that you get from the 914 group. Its great.
Kind of funny, on the way a few weeks ago to pick up my 914-6 conversion in Seattle, I was traveling on the freeway four lanes wide. Just outside Downtown Seattle traffic was very heavy and moving at a fairly good pace. I notice out to the right a guy running down the side of the freeway, traffic is slowing, and all of
a sudden I see a wheel rolling along by itself and moving past traffic downhill, into the center lane and it keeps on going. I felt sorry for the guy who was running. There was no way he was going to get that wheel and tire.
CCL CAMP 914