Part I
The craziest thing happened last Friday, something that the people that helped me had ever seen or heard of before. I was driving along with my girlfriend and crack, thud, crurrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It felt like my axle had dropped to the ground. It was a two lane road and I was in the right so I just stopped immediatly. I got out and my car looked "Slammed" (My back tires were almost tucked under my quarter panal. I had no clue what had happened but when I got closer I saw that my wheel was totally loose and my brake rotor was resting on the bottom of my rim. My dad came out and we jacked up the rear end to find that all 5 of my studs were broken off and my lugs were a few feet down the road with parts of my studs in them. My rotor was offset with the remaining studs in the spindle. I guess they all sheared off at the same time!! How could this of happened??

Part II
There was no way for the wheel to stay on the axle so when the tow truck got there he said that he couldn't tow it. It is already lowered 2" so he couldn't tow it from the back, so he told us the only thing he could do was to tow it, draging the axle. :thefinger Yeah right!! So a cop pulls up and they call up "Citizen Patrol" to block off the lane I'm in so we could fix it right there. I had to go get a new rotor, new studs, new lugs, and go to my house and get tools. When i get back I find that Auto Zone gave me studs that were two different sizes. Ok thats bad enough, but then when you get down past the caliper and rotor and you knock out the old studs, the new ones don't go in without pulling the spindle out somehow. By then some a$$hole cop that just got on his shift comes up and threatens to tow and impound my car. He was mad because we were blocking a lane and then he accused me of leaving burnout marks for around the corner. (which weren't even close to what my car could leave) So I had a real dilema on my hands.

Part III
With the cop riding my *** to get it done I had to get crazy. I didn't have the time or tools to pull the spindle so I used a bench grinder to shave a little off of the studs to slip it around the spindle. After a got them in they were too skinny so I ended up using high strength epoxy to fill in the gaps around the studs. I held them in place, let it dry and put everything back together. Right when i was tightening the new lugs, the cop was calling in the tow truck to take my car. I did not go through all of that to let them take my car. So we packed everything up and drove home really slow on my rigged contraption. Now my poor car is parked in my garage until I can get it to a Ford dealer to fix it the right way. Has anyone heard of this ever happening before?? Is this a factory defect or do you think some Ford Haters had something to do with this???

 

Holy crap, that is crazy. Did ANYONE work on your car lately, I mean anyone, oil change, anything. If so, so what they did to the car. Also, make sure it gets done right at the shop, so you dont go through this again. Glad everything worked out right,
Matt

 

I love a good conspiracy as much as most folks - but this problem probably stems from someone with an impact wrench set on "vaporize".

The newer mustangs all should have their tires installed with torque wrenches, not impact wrenches. This is usually meant to protect the rotors (which can easily warp due to this mistreatment), but also the studs.

A few questions: When was the last time you had the car serviced where they had to take the wheels on and off?

Did you watch them put the wheels back on - were they using an impact wrench?

What kind of wheels are you running?

I've had rotors warped by impact wrenches, and the tire guys who did it were willing to lie to my face (even when I pointed out they were reinstalling wheels all around me with impact guns). They didn't manage to wreck any studs, but not from lack of trying.

My closest personal experience was a memorable occassion when my plymouth valiant station wagon lost a right rear wheel (sheering off all 4 studs) on a curve one night. Truth to tell, it was my own fault - I knew it only had 3 studs, and I had been meaning to replace the missing one for several months...

I was also running wheels with the wrong offset, and the wheels weren't snugging all the way down on the hubs, but "riding high" on just part of the hub's shoulder.

Lucky I didn't kill myself. I was 18 years old.

tripleblack

 

wow, that really was a crazy story. now im going to re-torque my lugnuts so i dont die.