Wheel wobble wonder

I sometimes see cars on the motorway where one of the wheels have a terrible wobble. I wonder if the driver is even aware of the problem, but what can I do? The other day I spotted an old Jeep Cherokee on M25 with an interesting classic 'Airstream" caravan on tow. I bit further up, the Cherokee front pointed up in the sky, as one of the rear wheels had freed itself, and there is a considerable height difference on a 4x4 when one on the wheels goes on a random walk. As I was driving on, the said wheel passed me on the fast lane, but neatly laid itself to rest near the barrier half a mile up!

Reply to
johannes
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It isn't the wheel it is the trim that pushes in to the wheel. When it isn't fitted correctly and one side is raised it looks like the wheel is about to fall off.

A well invented story. It's odd how a wheel on a vehicle travelling slower than you (or even parked up) suddenly broke free, speeded up to go past you and stopped. If you say that one wheel travelled for half a mile faster than you were driving and it took that to catch it up, either you are making the whole thing up or the Jeep was travelling at 100mph+. Somehow with a caravan on the back I doubt it.

If you're going to invent a story, at least make it believable!

Reply to
Rob

Yes, there is this one. But what if the wheel has an angle compared to the one on the other side of the car?

Who said it was speeding up? I was passing the Heatrow area of M25 where there are 4 or 5 lanes, it was around 6pm when traffic was nearly stop go, averaging 10-20mph. I was delayed in my lane compared to a faster inside lane where the Cherokee + caravan was going.

I bet many saw the incident last Thursday as the road was very crowded at the time.

Reply to
johannes

Johanness, don't waste your time justifying yourself to Rob the tiscali prick...

Mike P

Reply to
Mike P

It kind of reminds me of the motorway where drivers often try to get one better. Then I sometimes look to see who the heck is driving, as I expect to find a yob behind the wheel. But what do I find? Mostly, I find a middle aged grey haired man in a white shirt. Seems that the car does something to you?

Reply to
johannes

Years ago one wheel came off a trailer which a friend was towing - I was in the passenger seat. It overtook us at a great rate and made it the best part of 1/4 mile before crossing the hard shoulder, heading up the side of a gentle cutting, crossing the fence and coming to rest in a field. A34 near Abingdon.

Ian

Reply to
Ian

I presume by "one better" it usually means being in front. Caveman thinking. I much prefer letting the wankers get their ounce of glory as they zoom past, knowing they will soon come across the heavy traffic I saw a mile back, but their myopic abilities don't see to the last moment. Takes an eternity for their brains to work though even though everyone else can see heavy traffic ahead and usually they still end up using brakes at the last minute. Talking of brakes on the motorway, there are more and more brake lights coming on these days and just shows how little people are looking and thinking ahead. Seems to be an almost regular activity for groups of suicide jockeys in lane 3, that you'd swear were towing they are so close. Brake, accelerate, brake, accelerate, like a line of train carriages with huge springs connecting them together.

Graham

Reply to
Graham

Graham expressed precisely :

..and as often as not with an empty L1 and L2 :-)

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

Heh, I'm a lurker in this group but you reminded me of an incident that happened to me MANY years ago. Probably '79 or maybe '80.

I was working as a delivery driver for a now defunkt firm of paper merchants in London. They had an automatic gearboxed Bedford CF van that they called their 'panic' van.

I got sent up to Weston Super Mare to deliver a pallet of paper. Off I went. Through London, M4 then M5. Somewhere near Portbury I was trundling along at about 65 mph. Slight drizzle, midday and light traffic. Then I saw a wheel fly past me on my right and bounce off up the motorway. I looked around for the crash that must have happened.... nothing. Then my van started listing to the back offside! Yes, it really was my wheel.

The hub settled on the tarmac, I took my feet off of all controls and tried to steer to the hard shoulder, I think I got to lane 1. It all stopped so I switched off, got out and got onto the side of the motorway expecting a major pileup behind me.

Nothing. The weight had made the paper slide backwards though and it had burst out of the back doors and spilt onto the motorway. In the drizzle it became expensive paper mache.

No one crashed into me. No one stopped. The police turned up a while later, and I was prosecuted for driving a vehicle that was unfit for the road. "The wheel fell off, don't tell me the vehcile WAS fit for the road!" said the copper. I had done my checks in the morning, but I forgot to measure the torque on the wheel nuts, silly me.

When I got the chance to look I saw that all five wheel studs had sheared through.

It went to court and I was convicted. However, the van had the tyre on that wheel replaced the day before by the leasing company. And the records showed it, and I took the records to prove it, but the magistrate said it was a mitigating circumstance so he wouldn't fine me or give me points, but the conviction stands. I drove the vehicle. The wheel fell of, therefore the vehicle wasn't fit. Therefore I was by definition guilty.

The law is an ass. Discuss.

Reply to
Mike Barnard

sounds like a sensible decision by the beak.

Reply to
Mrcheerful

================================== Even more years ago than that I heard a story of alleged dangerous overtaking. This was in the days before the M6 went into the Northern wilderness. A driver towing a rigid trailer and carefully descending Shap noticed that he was being overtaken by a rather unusual vehicle. He slowed even more to let the strange vehicle pass and as it passed him he realised that it was his own trailer. Apparently the shackle pin connecting the trailer and his eight wheeler had worked loose and dropped out leaving the trailer to carry on as a solo vehicle. The trailer ended up in a roadside field without causing any damage. I can't vouch for the truth of the story because I wasn't there, but apparently there were several thousand eye witnesses, judging by the number of times I heard the story.

Cic.

Reply to
Cicero

I saw something similar a couple of weeks ago: a wobbly rear wheel on a Kia, it was so bent that as the car sped up I could see the occupants getting rocked from side to side until it reached a high enough speed tthen the vibrations smoothed out :-) I couldn't get them to pay attention to me as both the cotton tops appeared to be glued to whatever was infront of them and not looking around or in their rear-view mirrors.

-- Chris

Reply to
Chris Dugan

It is. I've seen it before.

Reply to
Conor

Saw a Luton Transit on the A1 on Friday sans OSR wheel. I expect they'll be facing the same thing.

Reply to
Conor

I once had a Mk III Escort. Following a side impact accident, the rear offside wheel instead of being approximately vertical was at an alarming angle from the vertical. I was a little more cavalier about safety then than I am now and I drove that thing for months like that until the police stopped me and told me to take it off the road.

Reply to
Graz

And a complete inability to anticipate. Why zoom right up behind a lorry then try to pull out?

Reply to
malc

Having been in a car which has loose wheel bolts, I've no idea how anyone could not notice something is up. It makes the most horrendous noise.

Reply to
Doki

That depends how loose they are.

Reply to
Graz

But they can come loose... and off very quickly! Many years ago I took a Mini out for a first test drive after building it almost from scratch. After only a few hundred yards I noticed a horrible noise coming from the rear, but it stopped when I went round a corner, then started up again on the straight. Another hundred yards or so while I'm trying to work out what it could be, the noise suddenly stopped and I was overtaken by a wheel! Yes they do speed up and overtake you, apparently it's all to do with the radius of the wheel/tyre increasing when the load is taken off, but the RPM of the wheel still being the same. I guess I'd finger tightened the nuts but forgot to torque them up, but all four undid themselves and fell off remarkably quickly. BobC

Reply to
BobC

On a similar theme, a friend once told me a great story about how he was out in a speedboat when an outboard motor overtook him at full speed and slowly sunk beneath the surface. I've a feeling that one's been around for a while in different forms.

Reply to
Willy Eckerslyke

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