Total Chaos Uca Loosened And My Tire Fell Off!

[bufahad89]

Hey guys, i just installed fox shox with total chaos Upper Control Arms for my NNBS tahoe, and about 30 minutes after i received my car from the garage my right front tire fell off. It turned out that the nut which holds the ball joint to the UCA fell off, its a lock nut. The garage fixed everything for me but they dont know what caused it. Now im afraid of driving my car and having all this happening again.

 

Any ideas of what happened?

[bufahad89]

Here are some pics.

[JRLZ71]

Maybe they got a little lazy and just didn't tighten everything up properly. Trust me, that stuff happens all the damn time around here. I've seen hub caps, wheels, sun roofs, tailgates, mufflers, and just about anything else you can think of fly off of cars and trucks while going down the highway. Half ass work calls for a dangerous situation.

[wescollins]

If it's a lock nut, they probably forgot to tighten it. One thing you can do if you're worried about it is take a pair of pliers and ruff up the threads a little bit above the nut, but not so bad that you can't take it off when you need to replace it again. Makes it a lot harder for it to come off and you'll probably notice a bumping sound if it gets loose but it won't come all the way off.

[hodo78]

Maybe they got a little lazy and just didn't tighten everything up properly. Trust me, that stuff happens all the damn time around here. I've seen hub caps, wheels, sun roofs, tailgates, mufflers, and just about anything else you can think of fly off of cars and trucks while going down the highway. Half ass work calls for a dangerous situation.

 

 

My thoughts exactly.

[blackout07]

Glad you are okay! Good thing it happened so soon, otherwise they probably wouldn't have been so eager to fix everything.

[2bseen]

How did it not tear all the suspension up and the truck when it came off? You are very lucky.

[bufahad89]

Thanks for the replies, i asked my garage if there was any chance that the nut was loose, they said no because the threads were broken. Thoughts on this ?

[wescollins]

First post, the "nut fell off", then "threads were broken"? Does that mean the bolt broke or that the threads were stripped out? It's hard to tell exactly what happened looking at those pictures. Is that a picture of the ball joint that failed? Either way, chances are that if it's going to happen again, it will happen in the first few hundred miles. If the threads stripped out....i'd be worried too, something else is wrong or they're not telling you everything, like how they cross-threaded it when they installed it.