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OT - painful and very funny to watch

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I want to know more now. How did that happen? Did the studs break from being over-tightened? Did he forget to put the wheel nuts on? Did someone undo his wheel nuts? Was it just a prank for the camera? I need to know. I won't be able to sleep tonight.
 
Nick - I have no idea. I tend to agree with Kodanja that it was just an oversight. They guy probably switch wheels to run the event and forgot to tighten them up.
 
I've seen this twice. Once when I was behind a boat being towed by a family friend. It was just purchased from some older guy who had fixed the tire but not tightened the lugs with it on the ground. It went about 30 miles before the wheel developed a wobble. Once it wobbled, it took about 5 seconds for it to come off the axle and the boat trailer to slam into the pavement.

The next time it happened was to my Jeep. I changed the front tire in my garage but couldn't get the wrench between the wall and tire to tighten it down. Once I was outside, I completely forgot about it. I drove 180 miles that way, until I was offroad and climbing a short rock ledge when the lugs finally sheered. It ended up destroying the front hub assembly and the brake disc (the sheered lugs punched through the cast part in the center).

For this to have happened so quickly, I suspect someone was playing a prank, or someone stole a bunch of lugnuts from his car.
 
I've seen that before and believe he had used the wrong lug nuts for the wheels he had replaced....bad idea.
 
I saw this happen about 2:30 PM as I was driving on the M40, the motorway between Oxford heading towards London. A family in a Volvo were towing their full size house trailer (caravan) on their way to the continent for their summer holidays. The left wheel on the caravan came off and the left side "anchor" started to leave sparks flying. I was following about 200 feet behind when I saw it come off. Before we all stopped on the edge (the verge) of the motorway, I saw the wheel (still at about 50 MPH) roll up a 50 foot high slope where it took a leap and a bound another 20 feet higher over a fence and into a farmer's pasture. When I got out, the driver of the Volvo came back to look at the drum on his trailer. This is when he told me that he had just changed the wheels 30 minutes before as he was getting ready to leave home. He assumed that he must have forgotten to tighten the wheels nuts sufficiently.

Then he turned and looked all around for his missing wheel, as he had no spare. He asked me if I had seen where it had gone. After I told him, he went up the hill and over the fence. I'm sure he thought I was joking, but that's where he eventually found it. If I hadn't stopped to tell him, he would never have found it in a donkey's age.
 
I've also seen that and heard nearly the same thing. New wheels and the wheel studs ended up being too short so the lug nuts didn't fully engage the threads on the studs.
 
But how could you not notice that? Wouldn't your lug wrench keep spinning as you went to tighten? Massive stupidity or sabotage. I foolishly took a tire off once and put it back on but forgot to finish tightening down after I had lowered the car to the ground. Scary, but nothing happened after a 15 mile drive on the freeway. So something must have been left completely undone for all wheels to fall off in 100 yards. Hope he's not a pilot!
 
If you don't tighten the wheel nuts holding a steel wheel onto a TR3, the steel wheel will break all around the bolt hole circumference. When I bought my 1958 TR3A, I bought it brand new from the owner of Imported Cars. His name was Graham Locke, an ex-Brit with big WW-II mustaches like the pilots used to have and he raced a TR3 at the track at St. Eugene. During one of the races, his wheel came off. It happened as described above. He had forgotten to tighten all the wheel nuts.

You are lucky you found your wheel nuts were still loose after only 15 miles. It could have been much worse.
 
my nickle is on the wrong nuts for the wheels.
 
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