This weekend, just blocks away from my studio, I saw a TR6 that had been
in an accident. The car was up on a very high curb, right wheels on
the sidewalk, left wheels in the street. The front left wheel was off
the car and was laying on the side of the road, 5 or 6 car lengths
back. The driver was unharmed and making the usual phone calls. With
his permission, I looked over the car. It became readily apparent to
me that the left front spindle had come loose. The nut that holds it
from behind was gone. The spindle could be found still attached to the
wheel and hub assembly.
I hardly had time to do a full FCC investigation, but it looked to me
like that nut had either come loose, and then was battered loose or it
had been installed cross threaded, in the first place, and subsequently
came loose... as the threads of the spindle were a mess.
This TR owner was extremely lucky. It didn't happen on the freeway. It
didn't happen when he had passengers. It didn't happen with another
vehicle, motorcyclist, or pedestrians nearby. And the one section of
road where he left the tarmac was the one stretch where there were no
lamp posts or trees, etc. (100' forward or back, would have been a
different story.) It looks like his frame was slightly tweaked, the
front left wing and under body in that area damaged, the right two and
front left wheels damaged. The bonnet was tweaked, but may settle out
when the frame it checked, etc. Throw together the damage to the
suspension parts, brake callipers (which had been broken into pieces!),
etc., and he's likely looking at $6K in repairs or more. Sad, because
the car was quite beautiful. Relative to the car, the positive thing is
that the frame is robust and the car can be brought back to a high
standard in short time.
A few lessons here are...
1. Cross-threading is dangerous.
2. Try to inspect your vehicle when you have wheels off, etc.
3. Listen carefully to your vehicle and when it speaks, listen.
4. (I'm not a roll bar fan, but... think about one...)
And lesson for self... "Justin, your cell phone has a camera... use it."
--Justin
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