Check Your Lug Nuts

[Steve Staysko]

Check Your Lug Nuts, If Not a Fiery End Could Await You! This would make a grown man cry....

http://www.bangshift.com/blog/BangSh...Await-You.html

[Tinker]

This was on the hamb as well. I guess he was also using a wheel spacer of some kind.

Glad that he was okay. I guess the fire spread very quickly.

[richard crow]

what a shame if a rat rodder gets it he will drive it to shows just like it is. i seen worse brought to shows by them

[Ralph Moore]

An excellent reason for carrying a fire extinguisher, Although I've put out an engine fire on a buddy's truck with creek water.

[PeterC]

I believe I read that this car had an aftermarket plastic fuel tank - if the wheel departed the car at speed - sounds like that fuel tank hung below the frame and banjo and was crushed or dragged on the pavement with catastrophic results. I would assume if a rear wheel left an early Ford with a stock tank configuration - the tank would not hit the ground?

[37 Coupe]

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A few years ago here in Ohio a much more tragic event involving a fiberglass roadster newly built street rod. Guy was driving to Street Rod Nationals in Kentucky but didn't even get out of county he lived in with a wheel flying off of ill advised wheel adapters,car rolled over killing his wife instantly,he lasted a couple more days.

[Mart]

I noticed one of my trim rings was squeaking on my roadster. Checked the wheel nuts and 3 were loose and the other 2 were not really tight. Squeaking trim = loose wheel nuts.

Mart.

[2ndgeer]

Boy that's scary. Look's as if I was really lucky when the adapters on my '34 pickup broke and the left rear wheel came off. Fortunately, I had gotten off the high-speed highway and was making a U-turn into a vegetable stand with tree bark "paving." The wheel came off and damaged the fender. Whew...cheated death! I now have new adapters on the '57 Ford rear end for the Kelseys and I torqued the nuts to 70-80 ft-lbs.

[Gumpy]

I think this is a reminder to get a professional opinion when building a car and carry a fire extinguisher at all times!!

[JM 35 Sedan]

Several friends have sent this same story with pictures to me via email. It is sobering to see something like this, and knowing these things can happen, take some time out and check over all our vehicles (old and modern) for safety issues. Last June a fellow FB member was on his way to the York, PA, NSRA Street Rod Nationals in his early Ford PU. He inadvertently ran over a piece of steel laying on the highway and one of his tires projected that steel like a missile into his Poly gas tank. I believe someone traveling behind him saw what happened and somehow told him that he had a stream of gas spewing from the rear of his truck. He was able to safely pull off the road and shut his engine down before this lead to a more serious problem. He wound up draining all the gas from the Poly tank and bought an outboard motor gas tank with hose and squeeze ball. He put this tank into the back of his PU and connected the hose to his existing gas line and ran the rest of the way to York and then back home using this temporary hook up. Could have been a tragedy, but fortunately it was not.

[FlatheadTed]

I can see how this adapter could come of , there's no taper on the nuts like a wheel nut .,this could cause a slight bit of moment ,

Originally Posted by 2ndgeer

Boy that's scary. Look's as if I was really lucky when the adapters on my '34 pickup broke and the left rear wheel came off. Fortunately, I had gotten off the high-speed highway and was making a U-turn into a vegetable stand with tree bark "paving." The wheel came off and damaged the fender. Whew...cheated death! I now have new adapters on the '57 Ford rear end for the Kelseys and I torqued the nuts to 70-80 ft-lbs.

[tierod]

mount your extinguisher vertically so the powder does not cake up