[zymurgist]

Paul L,

I had a not-too-dissimilar experience. Many years ago, I owned a 1973 Toyota Celica, the kind with the body that looked like a baby Camaro. It had these trick aftermarket alloy wheels on it, as well as fog lights up front. This car was really stylin' for an 18 year old driver. These cool slotted wheels were held on by your standard acorn type lug nuts suitable for use with steel wheels, which were, in reality, totally wrong for the application. I found that out the hard way when I was driving along the road and one of the rear wheels came off. The car came to an abrupt halt, skidding along the metal shield that covered the brake drum. I thought that was a peculiar failure mode, put the wheel back on, and went about my business. This is where the stupidity comes in. Rather than perform even the most rudimentary causal analysis, I continued to drive around with the wrong lug nuts more-or-less holding the wheel on, until it happened again. This time, the emancipated wheel rolled out into the street and into the side of an old lady's car. She wasn't too happy about that, even though there was no damage to her car other than a black mark where the tire had struck it. ("You can buff that out, ma'am!") The cops came and we both told our stories... of course, I conveniently left out the part that it had happened before. He wrote me a warning and I went promptly to an auto parts store and found some lug nuts that would fit inside the holes and provide lots of thread to hold the wheels on. The wheels never came off again, at least not of their own accord.