Just thought I'd share...

[B Vibert]

That sucks Huw.  If you are going through insurance to fix it remember
that the wheel you hit  may have just fell off the back of the truck
in front of you and was still moving.  In that case it would be under
comprehensive, if you hit it laying on the road it is a collision
claim, which usually comes with an insurance rate hike.

Burl Vibert
1987 5kcstq
Kingston, Ontario


Huw Powell wrote:
>
> Last night I hit a tire on the Southeast Expressway doing about 50-60
> mph... I didn't even see it due to the vagaries of traffic.  There was a
> big BANG that I thought was me hitting the mother of all potholes, and
> then things felt a little wrong so I pulled over hard to the left and
> put on the 4-ways (there are no break down lanes on this wonderfully
> nasty road).
>
> I hopped out expecting to see a flat, already dreading changing the
> spare on with cars whipping by at 60, making emergency lane change
> manouvers to avoid me.
>
> No flat (!) ... but, the left front tire was sticking out at a rather
> awkward angle... oops.  If you've ever seen pictures of a compound
> fracture of a bone (or suffered one), this looked rather similar.
>
> A couple of tows later the patient is in the operating room so I can
> figure out what is wrong.  The basic malady is that the strut housing
> (upper half) of the two piece strut/bearing housing assembly tore right
> off the lower bolt holding it to the bearing housing.
>
> The outer cv boot got gouged up a bit by shrapnel, and the upper strut
> bearing looks a bit lopsided.  It remains to be seen whether the
> Bilstein suffered from getting jammed into the inside of the wheel
> well!  Oddly enough, the ball joint looks fine, as does the tie rod and
> tie rod end.  The brake caliper just went along for the ride, too.
>
> The car was even, in a very awkward sense, driveable... but more
> interesting than my wondering how far I could have driven it with one
> tire travelling sideways (home? 75 miles!?), was that with the front
> wheel basically broken off, the car handled just fine...
>
> --
> Huw Powell
>
> http://www.humanspeakers.com/
>
> http://www.humanthoughts.org/