Discussion Forum - Northstar Chevelle Club

Quite the interesting day.

Here it is coming out of the yard and onto my trailer.

On the way back, I dropped down to Waverly to get a rear door that was on craigslist.  As I was going thru Delano from Waverly, a state patrol commercial vehicle inspector pulled me over. He wanted to know who the company was that I was working for, who the HHR belonged to, etc. I told him it was all privately owned, there was no commercial usage. I showed him the copy of the title transfer for the HHR and the trailer. He sounded genuinely disappointed that he couldn't right me a pile of tickets for not having a state inspection sticker on my truck and trailer !!

After that, I followed 12 into 394 to I94 east and across to 35W north to go to Hwy 36. Just after I crossed the river bridge by the U, I felt a strange vibration and then the truck jolted back and forth from side to side a couple times. I looked in the mirror and the trailer was swaying side to side and just then the left rear tire/wheel came off and was rolling along beside me at 62 mph !!! I started slowing down and watching the tire. I was in the far right lane and it rolled across the other 3 lanes and into the median. I was relieved to see a guard rail that would prevent it from going into the southbound traffic and hitting someone head-on. When we were down to about 45, it hit a huge concrete pillar and REVERSED direction in a heartbeat, arched 20 feet in the air, crossing over the guard rail and landing in the southbound lanes where it bounced a few more times and came to rest straddling the white line dividing the 2 left lanes. I was out of the truck and crossed 4 lanes of traffic in a flash, waited for the cars to quit veering around it and got it out of the road. The lug holes were trashed from 4 of the 5 nuts working loose. All the studs finally broke off and that's what I saw flying out when I looked in my mirror. The drum was hanging about an inch above the raod surface, so I started going down the shoulder at 20 mph and after I didn't hear it scrapping or leaving a shower of sparks, I gradually increased the speed to the minimum 40 and drove the 16 miles home on 3 wheels. It would touch on some bumps and all right hand turns but it did very little damage.

Once I had the trailer in my shop, I ran down to Ace trailer in Hastings for a new drum/hub assembly and wheel. He had just sold the 4 drums he had last Friday but came up with a used one that looked like new and GAVE it to me. I bought a wheel and had him remove my tire from the junk wheel and mount it on the new one. He charged me $58 for all that along with 5 new lug nuts !! The wheel is a modular and doesn't match the other spoke wheels, but I was/am planning to put aluminum wheels on it at some point anyway.

On the way back up Manning from Hastings, I saw 2 birds in a tree ahead and having the camera with, I was able to get some pics of them.

All in all, it wasn't a bad day. The trailer debackle could've been much worse and seeing the eagles on the way home helped my mood a little.