When I was driving semi I saw a very old bubble nose Mack lose a whole rear axle shaft along with the tires and wheels on the drivers side just outside of Chicago.

For a few miles while I was following him I thought it looked like the outside tire on that side was getting a little wide and told him so on the CB. He proceeded to tell me all about how he had totally rebuilt the tractor to better than original then the axle worked its way out of the tube and took off.

We were moving right along and traffic was fairly heavy but no one got hit or hurt. I'll bet a lot of folks had to pull in at the next rest stop to check their shorts though. I thought real hard about it myself. That much free adrenaline does strange things to my digestive system.

The wheels rolled along nicely for a bit and seemed to pickup speed, then bumped into the back of a car and went airborne and flipped over the car landed on the edge of the road in front of it and took off into the median where it did some more acrobatics and finally landed axle first and planted itself in the ground.

That's a lot of mass to have freewheeling totally out of control down the highway and median. Luckily it did not cross the median or it would have gotten into on coming traffic. I stopped to try to help but the axle was no longer straight and he was pretty well stuck there until a tow truck could come get the tractor. He offered me $5,000 if I would take his load on to Iowa City. I was already under a load going back to the yard in Moline but it sure was tempting.

This was in about '86 or so and not everyone had cell phones back then. Neither of us did, finally some dude in a car stopped and let him use his cell to call his company back in Ohio. They assured him that their wrecker was on the way so I left.

 

Lost a wheel in a bug years back. Funny thing, the street was busy with traffic and after I stopped, there was nary a car in sight. The tire was about a half mile away. Luckily I always carried extra lugs and was back on my way in no time.

 

So are the wheel spacers dangerous?

 

lack of attention to torque of the lug nuts periodically is the danger!! not the wheel spacers, otherwise they would be illegal!

 

Thank you Oldblue, for the words of advice :)

 

Someone parked their HHR directly across from my Buick project and I thought it made for a really good photo opp. Sure illustrates how much different the lines look from where it started off.

 

Cool Ben!

Unless you single out the mirrors and headlamps, you have totally subsumed the HHR DNA, what an amazing change!

Check out my PM and the morphing idea for the side project, let me know what you think.

P.S. Thanks Oldblue for answering the spacer question, really appreciate it!

 

Thank you Mike! I have an upcoming change planned for the mirrors... But other than the led accent lights, nothing too drastic planned for the headlights.... Yet

 

I like how you snuck in "yet" Ben, you're a crafty one my friend.

 

Well I say yet because I really have thought long and hard about giving this car some completely different light treatment, the fact that it is my daily driver has really given me pause. So for now I will concentrate on tweaking the rest of the body work.. Lord knows that there is no shortage of work left for me to get completed.