Oops: Learned a lesson about torquing lug bolts

[ggehrke at gmail.com (GGehrke)]

So I'll come right out and say that as best I can figure, everything
that I'm about to say is completely my own fault.

I finished putting a new brake MC, stainless lines, wheel cylinders,
pads and shoes on my '80 last friday.  Brian and I determined that my
drivers side front caliper was bad (piston leaking, not seated
properly, something like that) so I was looking for a new one.
I spent the weekend with my girlfriend in Washington, DC and tuesday
morning left on my way back home to KY.  I noticed the car shook more
than usual over the extremely rough city streets, but kept hoping it
was just the streets, because I knew I had a wheel bearing on the
passenger side front on its way out.  It started to wobble worse and
steering was sloppy so I pulled over and checked the bad wheel to see
if the it moved too much, which it didn't.  I checked the driver side
briefly too just to be sure.
Couple more miles down the road the car starts shaking pretty
violently so I slow down and decide to pull off at the next exit
(under a mile) to give it a thorough check when all of the sudden I
feel the steering wheel jerk, the car slams to the ground, and to my
horror the passenger side wheel goes rocketing down the freeway,
keeping up the 65mph I was doing.  I navigated off to the side of the
road safely, but noticed that another car pulled off just ahead of me.
 Turns out the wheel had actually bounced off him (he was just pulling
up to try to tell me he saw it shaking) but only left a small rubber
scuff on the side (he was in a newer golf, by chance).  He gave me a
lift to the next exit where I called a tow truck.  They took me to a
shop, where I determined that the lug bolts must have come completely
loose and just let go.  One of the holes in the hub was buggered where
the bolt had stripped and left about 3 turns of thread in the hub.  I
also found my brake pads were bent on that side, but there wasn't any
other apparent suspension damage or anything.  After about 5 hours of
waiting I convinced the shop that the hub just needed to be tapped to
clean out the threads, instead of installing a new one, but they
couldn't get a replacement caliper until the next day.  Fortunately
the Naval Academy has a program where they network families across the
country who we can call if we get into this sort of bind, so a nearby
family came and picked me up for the night.  Went back the next day
and the car was better than before.  The brakes were properly flushed
and bled with a new caliper (passenger side could still use
replacement, but I'll wait on that) and really feel pretty great. 
Unfortunately, when all was said and done it was about a $400 bill for
work that I could have done myself for a fraction of the cost, but I
was stuck in the middle of nowhere with no other options.  ($400+300
for other brake supplies = maxed out visa = unhappy grant)
I actually never even found the wheel (riding now on one of the stock
wheels that came with the car, which I kept as a spare) even though I
looked for it all up and down the highway for over 2 hours, so that's
another costly replacement.  I never saw the lugs either so I can't be
sure what happened, but best I can figure I simply forgot to tighten
them properly.  I tightened them with the car in the air, and then put
it down on the ground and tightened them all the way. Brian could
attest to seeing me do this.  I just used a small ratchet, though,
because my stock lug wrench won't fit into the holes of my new wheels,
so I guess it wasn't enough and with a known bad wheel bearing (which
is holding up just fine) I didn't even think about it.
After getting it all straightened out I made it home to Kentucky
safely (though a solid day late and moderately shaken) where I'll
spend a day before heading up to cincy tomorrow.  I was really
thinking about scrapping cincy and staying in washington the next few
days to save money, but decided I wasn't going to miss this for
anything (which should say something to anyone else out there who's
wavering).  Before I go, though, I'm going to torque the snot out of
those lug bolts and carry an even better assortment of tools.  Lesson
learned, as they say, the hard way.

-Grant-