I was in work 12pm-11pm car was parked outside in the car park. When finished got into the car and drove off noticed a weird knocking under acceleration so stopped to check it out thought I hadn't fitted the exhaust to turbo bolts back on properly so checked noticed one of them was loose so assumed it was this and need to get the car home before any damage was caused. Got back in and drove on the knocking got worse so stopped had a look at the bolt it had got a little bit looser but not much so was nearly home so decide to just take it easy and get the car home at least. Got back in the car and drove down the road abit the knocking getting really bad I was like **** the exhaust is about to fall down! bang!!!.. the car hit the ground. In shock I paused for a second and then started freaking out as the car was nose first on the passenger side into the ground. Jumped out of the car saw the wheel lying against the kerb and had tore itself out of the passenger front wing. Someone had loosen the bolts off the wheel while I was in work. What I can understand is there is nothing fantastic about my wheels they are just plain spiders aero soled grey. If I hadn't been cautious about the noise I might not be typing this right now but lucky at the stage of it coming off I was only doing about 5mph. What I don't understand is why would someone really do this!?

I blame myself for not second guessing the sound and just assuming it was the loose turbo bolt!

Here is a picture of the damage I'm lucky it was only the subframe and passenger wing that got damaged

If anyone has any info on changing the wing it would be greatly appreciated!

All I can assume is that you may of upset somebody near you which has made them do this out of spite to cause damage to your car

How can you be sure someone loosened them?

Maybe they just weren't tight to start with?

That was my initial thought as I was blaming myself for maybe forgetting the tighten them but I had been driving around on them for days with no problems and hitting high speeds in certain areas! Even on the drive to work they were fine no noise what so ever.

Did they put the nut covers back on too? I can see 4 in the shot above? (unless you'd refitted the wheel at this point?)

I had refitted the wheel at this point and never found the last nut so am missing one walked the entire drive I had just done to see if It came off while I was driving never did find it!

Any CCTV coverage of where your car was parked?

Ugh, idiots mate :(

Glad there's no further damage!

Any CCTV coverage of where your car was parked?

Yeah but they are known to be useless they said in the dark they cant see activity as they turn the car park lights out!

Jesus eccentric I feel sorry for ya man . I once had the same thing happen me too driving through Limerick city . Although it was a mechanic who had replaced a wheel bearing for me an never re torqued the wheel nuts . He got a right bollicking off me .. Hope you get it sorted bud

maybe you forgot to do them up?? can take a while to wind out!!

mat had this on his car just nipped them up 1 week later lots of miles and hey presto wheel came loose luckily he stopped when he heard a bad knocking noise !!

You are running spacers yes? I have seen this across loads of forums with wheel spacers which is why I really don't like them.

Happened to me when i had my micra. Luckily the banging & huge amount of wheel wobble led me straight to the source. I assumed i had a flat tyre at first. There was 3 bolts just keeping my alloy on and the fourth bolt was missing completely. I checked all the bolts on all the wheels and two of the back ones were missing too so someone tried to have my alloys off but must of been disturbed. Two weeks later someone smashed the back window and snapped my spoiler off but the alarm went off so they legged it.

Sent from my iPhone 4s

I don't deny it might of been me making a human error. But what I can't understand is going from 120mph with the wheels fine to the next day at 5mph and the wheel falling off

yep they will do that can take a while to go loose but when they do it will happen very fast imo

What ever the reason mate :(

Gutted :(

Hope u get it all fixed ok :(

I don't deny it might of been me making a human error. But what I can't understand is going from 120mph with the wheels fine to the next day at 5mph and the wheel falling off

Possibly because the damage did occur at speed, but due to everything being that bit hotter, the slackness wasn't as obvious as when cooled down. Once that slackness did become apparent they would turn out much freer and easier.

No locking wheel nut?

Sure somebodies not tried to have them away

sorry to hear about you bad luck buddy, similar thing happened to me when i was shopping one day, parked car in multi story and came back later to find some ahole had dented my front wing.

I fitted a replacement myself which is easy actually as they are bolt on.

I also manged to get same colour wing so did not need spraying either

to remove and fit a wing is straight forward

First I taped around metalwork to stop any scratches when removing wing and to help line up the new wind to the tape line.

need to undo the side bolt of front bumper to get to teh single wing screw behind it.

undo 2 bolts from inside the front door to wing and think there is a nut the other siade as well.

undo the bolts on top of wing and remove side repeater. remove mudflap and undo the bottom wing bolt near mudflap

remove headlight and indicator

should end up with somthing light this

hope this helps

Wow that's not good, glad you're okay and were going slowly.

If someone deliberately did that it's a pretty serious thing to do, they could have killed you!

If I was sure it wasn't down to my error I would be phoning the police.

sickened for you mate!

same thing happend to my mate when he went finishing came back drove off and 2 of his van weels fell off before he was out of the carpark, maybe its just what the kids are upto these days. they were steels so its unlikely someone was trying to steal them.

I don't deny it might of been me making a human error. But what I can't understand is going from 120mph with the wheels fine to the next day at 5mph and the wheel falling off

Not being funny mate but going from 120mph to your wheel dropping off......Sounds like it was never tightned properly?

id say your lucky if you forgot or if someone done it in spite. Either way, glad no one was hurt.