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  1. #1
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    Well, I done fucked it up...

    I like to think of myself as being fairly handy, and with YouTube videos explaining how to do anything and everything these days I figured I would save a couple hundred bucks and do the pads and rotors on my '08 highlander myself yesterday.

    Everything went smoothly until I hit the last wheel, right rear. The rotor was seized on, and no amount of pb blaster or wacks with the mallet would budge it.

    I tried the trick YouTube showed me of using a bolt through the hanger bracket to push it off, but the bracket didn't quite line up and I couldn't get it to work.

    So, frustrated and losing daylight, I said fuck it. I put my new pads in with the old rotor, bolted everything back together and put the wheel back on.


    Fast-forward to this morning driving 70 on the highway headed to work..

    Everything had been feeling fine, braking was smooth and quiet. Then all.of a sudden I heard and felt a vibration from the rear. Sounded like a helicopter, real loud and came on real quick.

    I immediately began to pull over, when the next thing I knew I felt the right rear drop and saw my wheel go careening past me off into the woods.

    That'll be a hub, bearing, backing plate, caliper, alignment, and the original brake job for a mere $1,900, thank you very much.


    FUCK!!!


    Still not sure exactly what happened.. I know I tightened the lugs down snug when I put the wheel back on.

    I quit. No more DIY car repairs for me. It would have been cheaper to get the brakes done by a fuckin' dealer.
    Last edited by JayPowHound; 03-31-2015 at 03:04 PM.

  2. #2
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    Ouch. Sounds like you forgot a nut. So the LR was the stuck rotor, but the RR is the one that fell off? Just the wheel? Or was it still attached to the rotor?

  3. #3
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    dont let machines dictate your life
    Zone Controller

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  4. #4
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    sorry for your pain, but that is fucking funny.
    "fuck off you asshat gaper shit for brains fucktard wanker." - Jesus Christ
    "She was tossing her bean salad with the vigor of a Drunken Pop princess so I walked out of the corner and said.... "need a hand?"" - Odin
    "everybody's got their hooks into you, fuck em....forge on motherfuckers, drag all those bitches across the goal line with you." - (not so) ill-advised strategy

  5. #5
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    Glad you didn't get hurt. It is funny to watch a wheel break free and continue on it's own path

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Danno View Post
    sorry for your pain, but that is fucking funny.
    Reminds me of that Ron White bit. "Lug nut day"

  7. #7
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    Not that you're planning on doing another brake job, but did you disengage the parking brake before banging on the rotor?

    I saw a guy last week in the middle of a three lane highway with no wheels on the drivers side of his car. As traffic was moving quite slow past him, I spent a good amount of time trying to see where his wheels went. But there was no sign of them and there were barriers on each side of the road.
    "timberridge is terminally vapid" -- a fortune cookie in Yueyang

  8. #8
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    No slomo vid footage set to that Sail song? I am disappoint.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Danno View Post
    sorry for your pain, but that is fucking funny.
    My thoughts.

    That and good job not killing anyone with your errant wheel.
    Quote Originally Posted by Downbound Train View Post
    And there will come a day when our ancestors look back...........

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by JayPowHound View Post
    Everything went smoothly until I hit the last wheel, left rear. The rotor was seized on, and no amount of pb blaster or wacks with the mallet would budge it.

    ...I felt the right rear drop and saw my wheel go careening past me off into the woods.
    ¿Qué?

  11. #11
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    Did you rescue your wheel from the woods?
    Aim for the chopping block. If you aim for the wood, you will have nothing. Aim past the wood, aim through the wood.
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  12. #12
    jgb@etree Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by Timberridge View Post
    Not that you're planning on doing another brake job, but did you disengage the parking brake before banging on the rotor?

    I saw a guy last week in the middle of a three lane highway with no wheels on the drivers side of his car. As traffic was moving quite slow past him, I spent a good amount of time trying to see where his wheels went. But there was no sign of them and there were barriers on each side of the road.
    Fully inflated tires bounce. I almost died ~5 years ago driving on I95 near Norwalk when a bouncing wheel that came off a car going in the opposite direction landed on the hood, and then went thru the windshield and ended up in the passenger seat.


    OP: You missed a couple of steps. When you're done doing a brake job, you take the car for a quick spin to bed in the new pads and when done you're supposed to re-torque the lug nuts. Also, did you remember to clean off the new rotors with brake cleaner?

  13. #13
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    Typo.. Right rear was last. Right rear was stuck. Right rear came flying off at highway speed. Sorry for the confusion.. edited for clarity.

    And yes, I recovered the wheel 100 yards deep. Grateful I was in the right lane when it came off!!

    To answer other questions, the parking brake was definitely not engaged. I took a lap to bed em in, but did not re-tighten lugs after. Maybe that was the issue. Shit. New rotors were cleaned and all pads were lubed. I tightened lugs to the point of resistance on the jack and snugged em down on the ground. May not have done so in the approved star pattern. Shit.
    Last edited by JayPowHound; 03-31-2015 at 03:10 PM.

  14. #14
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    That is terrifying, I'm glad you didn't die. Did you tighten the lug nuts in the right order? You are supposed to tighten them in a star pattern, once while the car is still jacked up, then again even tighter once you let the car down again. People make fun of me for it but I use a torque wrench to make sure I've evenly tightened them. There is a torque spec for your lug nuts which it seems that everyone ignores.

  15. #15
    Kied's Avatar
    Kied is offline Inconsiderate Tree Killer
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    Damn! Well, don't beat yourself up too much. Same thing happened to a friend of mine out at Hood River last month and she had it "professionally done." Shit happens. Glad to hear you're okay.

  16. #16
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    It went better than this....

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by frorider View Post
    No slomo vid footage set to that Sail song? I am disappoint.
    If he was Russian we would have some sweet dash cam footage...

  18. #18
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    Dodged a tire on the I-90 bridge once. Came off a car several 100 feet ahead of me and proceeded to ricochet back and forth between the outer wall of the bridge and the jersey barrier. Kinda scary at 60mph.

    Another incident - my friends parents (in their 60s) were riding their Goldwing on the highway outside of Boise, ID when all the sudden his dad felt his mother slump against him. A tire had come off a car traveling in the opposite direction, jumped the jersey barrier and hit her in the head. Didn't kill her but totally messed her up for the rest of her life.

    Good thing your tire headed into the woods.

  19. #19
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    A couple weeks back, during the return journey from a BC ski trip, I was stranded on the side I-87 with ml242 after a large, flying hunk of aluminum smashed through the foglight area of his A4 and severed the lower radiator connector. All the coolant drain onto the breakdown lane. We called a tow truck, and were lucky that ml had a friend nearby who could give us a lift to a train station.

    His friend pulled up just as ml's car was being towed away. We said hello, shook hands and and BOOM!

    I turned to see a tire hovering in the air not far from where I stood. It then, of course, fell to the ground. Shortly thereafter a truck dragging some sort of shitty dune buggy pulled over behind us. One of the wheels from his shitty dune buggy thing and fallen off, bounced down the high at 60 mph, and slammed into the back of ml's friends car, obliterating the bumper, a taillight and compressing the rear quarter panel. If the car hadn't been there. The wheel likely would have killed or maimed one of us.

    Therefore, when reading your tale, I couldn't help thinking that you're a fucking idiot who deserves death by firing squad for endangering poor innocents like me.

  20. #20
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    You may have broken or cracked one or more of the lugs hammering at the rotor trying to pry it off and when you drove off the force of a wheel turning at highway speeds was enough to do the rest. Consider yourself lucky to only out $1900 versus killing someone and being sued for all of your future earnings plus attorneys fees and possible jail time. Cheap lesson learned.
    License to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations

  21. #21
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    Good to hear no one was hurt or worse.

    So, only the wheel came off and the damage to the other stuff was from it dragging on the ground, right?

    Even if you didn't tighten in the correct pattern if you kept going around to each lug nut and tightening until they were all uniform you should have been okay. Hell, I've seen five lug wheels with 2 missing lugs that stayed on cars for long periods of time.

    Crazy shit man.

  22. #22
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    My last Toyota was in the 1980's, so I'm not familiar with the wheel bearing, axle set up. Re-torquing the wheel lugs would have only made just the tire come off. You may have damaged the axle/axle bearing beating on it...Those rusted rotors (or any hub) can be a real bitch to get off. Most have a threaded hole to install a bolt through the rotor which pushes on the axle hub to remove the rotor.

    Broken axle? The repair shop should be able to see what broke.

  23. #23
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    I always use torque wrench on lugs, and check the torque again after driving awhile. Good thing nobody got hurt and your car just needed a fix. FWIW garages have sometimes cost me way more. I started learning after getting ripped off a few times, and it's a greasy sweary sweaty bloodied knuckle affair but I wouldn't go back on wrenchin

  24. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by mtl_ripper View Post
    Good thing nobody got hurt and your car just needed a fix.
    Ya, no shit. The more and more I think about it the more grateful I am that I had time to get into the right lane after the vibration started, and that that's the side that came off.

    The highway I was on (95N, north of Boston near Topsfield) isn't super busy that time of morning since I drive away from the city, but there were definitely other cars around. With the speed that wheel had as it bounced off into the woods there's no doubt it would have fucked some shit up.

    I will get my car back tomorrow, and no one got hurt. It could have been very, very much worse.

    If I choose to try wrenching again in the future I will do it on a weekend when I have plenty of time to safely check my work. The combo of getting frustrated by the stuck rotor as I was losing daylight on a Monday night and the need to drive 35 miles to work first thing the next morning was clearly not a good recipe for messing around with repairs that I don't really know how to do in the first place.

    Lesson learned.

  25. #25
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    Glad you and everyone else is ok and its only stuff that can be fixed.
    watch out for snakes

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