At 08:18 PM 1/31/00 -0800, Jeff McNeal wrote:
>
>Hello all. It is with great humility and hopes to help others that I have
>documented an embarassing and what could have been potentially fatal
>happenstance today.
>
>My wheel fell off while the car was in motion. Why? In a nutshell, haste
>combined with inexperience and a parts mistake that went unnoticed before it
>was too late.....
Jeff,
Truely a bummer and I can sypmathize and empathize with you. I have a
similar story. When I 1st got my Morgan back in 69, I took it to an
autocross. I wanted to run it, but my grilfriend said not to, you just
got the car and don't know it yet. I was listening to several of my friends
talking about how they were making one turn, and they were saying something
about a handbrake turn. Not being too shy, and always inqusitive, I asked
one of them, what they ment by a "handbrake" trun?
They proceeded to describe how to do it. I went over to a deserted part of
the parking lot and tried it. IT WORKED!!! About 1/2 way through the spin
I hurd a clink... clink,clink,clink and saw something flash. So I let off
the brake, didn't downshift, hit the brakes and let the car stop. I got
out and looked around, my right front spinner had come off and the wheel was
about 1/2 way off the hub. I went and retreived it, jacked up the car, and
slid the wheel back on and drove home.
A few days later, I had just come off the interstate, and got stopped behind
a bus. As I stopped, I heard the clunk, clunk.... One of the front spinners
(don't remember which one) came off. I retreive it, put it back on, and off
I go. This happened several more times. I finally got very irratated at
this and decided to find out what was wrong.
It turns out that the last person to work on the car (not me - it happened
before I bought it) had had both sides of the front end torn down and reversed
the right and left hubs when they put it back together. Once I change that
around, I never had the problem of throwing a spinner again.
John
John T. Blair WA4OHZ email: jblair@exis.net
Va. Beach, Va Phone: (757) 495-8229
48 TR1800 48 #4 Midget 65 Morgan 4/4 Series V
75 Bricklin SV1 77 Spitfire
Morgan: www.team.net/www/morgan
Bricklin: www.bricklin.org
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