“Simply, then add lightness” was the philosophy of legendary Lotus founder Colin Chapman, but it’s rather unnerving when your vehicle decides to simplify and add lightness while you’re underway. [Ed note: if you only click one link today, that’s the one.] While parts aren’t supposed to fall off of vehicles while driving, if you happen to be piloting an abominable shitbox, it can happen.
I haven’t always owned good examples of vehicles, so I’ve lost several things while underway. A section of exhaust piping on my Ford Crown Victoria made a horrendous clunk as I ran over it, the undertray on my G35 was largely silent as it parted company with the rest of the car, and an indicator lens on the Crown Victoria barely made a whisper as the ancient sealant gave up on life, allowing the polycarbonate to be taken by the breeze. Believe it or not, I’ve had a part fall off of a brand-new vehicle while driving too. Many years ago, I was driving a GMC Acadia press car over some freeway expansion joints when one of the rear HVAC vents fell out of the ceiling.
The most puzzling case of parts-shedding I’ve encountered didn’t happen to me, but I’ll never forget witnessing it. Pulled over on the oncoming side of the road was a second-generation Hyundai Accent, and several meters behind the car, its fuel tank was resting in the road. Given the tenacity of filler necks and lines, one can only imagine how the hell the driver managed to do that.
So, have you ever had parts fall off of a vehicle while driving, and if so, what were they? How spectacular or stealthy was the departure? As ever, we’d love to hear your experiences with spontaneous lightweighting in the comments below. We can commiserate, because many of us have been there before.
(Photo credits: Hyundai)
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Headlight trim ring on my Volvo 1800ES on the highway. Crank pulley on an old 626. Alternator pulley and belt on my J10. Driveshaft on my J10 (this past Friday). Lots of fun “bang” sounds in my past… and present, it would seem. Should just buy a new Civic and be done with it.
The driveshaft fell off??
Yup. The front U-joint self-destructed, and the front end of the driveshaft (thankfully!) dropped onto the exhaust system. I pulled the hardware at the rear and removed the driveshaft completely to make it easier for the tow truck driver to tow it.
Yikes.
Hubcaps on my ’66 T-bird. So, so many times. I don’t even bother with them anymore because they’re too much trouble and I’m tired of having to run into the middle of busy intersections to fetch stray hubcaps.
The issue seems to be that bias-ply tires are stiff, so the rims on my T-bird are designed with stiff tires in mind and are thus not very stiff. Radial tires, while safer in every way, are not so stiff, so when paired with steel wheels with the rigidity of a spatula, they pop even a properly adjusted hubcap off at low speeds.
I’ve read that using silicone strips to adhere the hubcap to the rim can keep it on, but I have yet to try it due to the hubcaps currently being adjusted poorly from another attempt to make them stick, so they currently won’t fit on the car at all.
At some point I might just put some Mustang styled steel wheels on it and be done with the hassle of hubcaps.
There were many but I guess the worst was an 8ft bedliner. It still might actually be floating in the air somewhere. I retraced my route twice and never found it.
More recently a hood spring broke loose at a stop light on my bedliner-less F-250. Man, the noise that made.
my rustbucket Bronco dropped the passenger rocker panel driving down the street; we were driving along and suddenly there was this hideous grinding noise. apparently it was shooting sparks as it dragged along the ground.
I was driving my freshly LS swapped 92 C1500. I felt a little vibration. Thought I must have something stuck on the tires. So like any good gearhead laid on the throttle to clear the tires. That’s when the acceleration stopped and I saw something fly across 3 lanes of traffic. Coasted into a parking lot only to discover I was missing a driveshaft. So I called the tow truck walked back down the street and picked up my driveshaft. This happened in 2020. I painted the mangled driveshaft gold and mounted it on the wall as a trophy to 2020, the year we got shafted!
Lost my driveshaft last Friday (front U-Joint). It landed on the exhaust and stayed with the truck. I undid the rear joint and popped the driveshaft into the back so that the tow operator didn’t have to break out his dollies. In the dark. At the junction of a busy road and the interstate. At rush hour.
Lots of times. Most notable might be the time a brake pad came out of place. A large bang, the brake pedal fell, and then everything seemed normal. The noise sounded like drivetrain binding, and the one-time pedal movement seemed like I had burped up an air bubble. It drove normally afterwards, and I couldn’t find anything actually wrong, so I continued getting ready for a week-long offroad camping trip.
But I now know the padless caliper piston was pushing on the rotor. After driving a couple of hours offroad into the woods (far away from any parts stores), I ground through enough of the caliper piston for the piston seal to fail and leave me without brakes. Made for an interesting brakeless drive the next day back to civilization to find brake parts.
I once lost the rear license plate off of our company work vehicle. Steel bumper had rusted badly and routinely left chunks lying around, which was a bit embarrassing. But the time I had to go back to our vendor and embarrassedly retrieve the piece of bumper containing the plate…well…that just takes the cake! And, no, the company still didn’t replace the rusty vehicle after that. We just had a stainless steel bracket fabricated to hold the plate while the remaining chunks of bumper continued to fall off.
I’ve also managed to lose tires (plural), wheels (plural), a hood, and a universal joint while driving at highway speeds. And probably other things that aren’t coming to mind…
Yes. Belt tensioner. Technically it came off in multiple pieces. Used zip ties to keep the alternator charging. Good times.
I lost an exhaust manifold stud in my old Miata while running it up hwy 9. Not something that would normally be noticeable in a car *that* loud, but it was the one that held in the coolant crossover pipe. I found a suitable stick and stuck it in the hole to retain the pipe. Only burned the shit out of myself a little bit. Most of the coolant had been evacuated so I coasted back down to the gas station in Saratoga, grabbed a couple bottles of water to refill the rad and drove it home. Same car also threw the power steering belt mid corner (short nose crank), and lost the bolts coupling the exhaust to the cat… Loved that car, lol.
I seem to recall losing an exhaust or two long ago but those weren’t nearly as exciting as:
I had the trailer wheel of my boat trailer come off, Luyckly I was still in the neighborhood and jumped out of my jeep and caught the trailer tire before it got very far. The tow truck driver needed me to pull the boat a bit strait as he was pulling it up the flatbed so I used my tow strap and pulled perpendicular to the flatbed.
Lost a heat shield this past Friday night on my 2013 4Runner. Luckily the driveshaft kept it from falling out, and as you can image it made a lovely noise the rest of the way home. It snowed that night, so the next morning I had to lie in the slush while I wrestled it out.
Frickin Toyotas.
Hell yes, usually exhaust parts. I actually drove over my own muffler once.
A friend of mine in high school had a beater 300D, and we spent the better part of our junior and senior years seeing if we could kill it. In the end, we could not, and this includes my friend slamming the gearshift from drive into 1 at 55mph. Several times. Those were some horrible noises. He tried to put it in park like that but it’s locked out at speed. Anyway we were in it one day and the exhaust pipe started dragging on the ground, probably because we’d just been in a field doing donuts earlier. Turns out the exhaust was being held up by a piece of old telephone wire. We tied it back up and were on our way. Guess it didn’t entirely fall off, but it’s the closest story I’ve got.
Essentially what happened in the clip. but it was the fabric roof on an MGB. 70 or so on the NY Throughway, deafening ‘WHAM’ and nothing but blue sky above. Weather was good; thank heaven for small favors.
Never happened to me, but I will posit a gas tank falling doesn’t sound that far-fetched to me.
The fuel filler neck rotted out on my old Econoline, and during a prior repair that required dropping the gas tank, the straps holding the tank were also rotted or damaged in some way that required replacement.
When I was in high school, the vinyl top on my ’77 Catalina ripped off the car on the interstate. Luckily, I was in the outside lane on the river bridge and it drifted over the edge and into the water instead of into the cars behind me.
Not often, which is surprising considering the jalopies I have driven for much of my life, but I did once suffer one of the most ignominious parts failures you can have: my 1977 Dodge Tradesman van broke a U-joint in traffic and dropped one end of the driveshaft. The rear one, thank God, so I didn’t pole-vault the rear axle.
1989 Camaro with V6. Replaced the exhaust from the rear axle back (muffler, tips) with brand new Duralast parts 2 years earlier.
In college now and taking two really cute Japanese exchange students on a shopping run since they didn’t have transportation. Pulling up to a red light and I notice a marked increase in noise. I pull away and get just through the intersection and “klunk-bump-dragging” and then nothing but much louder V6 buzz. Stop the car, run 30 feet back, grab my newly departed exhaust system and throw it in the back of the car. The breakpoint was the new section and the other end just popped out of the hanger
Never saw those cute girls again. Thanks Dunnalast.
Only those of us of a certain age will know the sound, image and frustration of being overtaken by your own hubcap as it spins by, hits a curb and launches into the brush you’re going to be looking through for it. Overall this is minor, thankfully by the time I was driving my pops had already done a few himself, for years we matched different hubcaps for drivers and drinkers sides.
Entire wheel rolled off my 92 XJ on the NJ Turnpike. Very mysterious. Multiple wheels had been loose for months before that, but I just tightened them (and got locking nuts) and proceeded with my dumb college life. Luckily we were slowing down coming into a toll plaza. Very upsetting cause it gives me mixed feelings about an otherwise legendary car.
Still no idea what caused this!
Somehow I feel this question is related to my discord post last night, so here it is:
Yesterday my GX460 lost a rear brake pad. There had been no discernable noise or squealing until leaving work yesterday, when there was brake grinding, so i called my shop to schedule for today, but 8 miles into the 12 mile ride home ABS light blew up and started beeping at me. lost almost all braking, but was able to safely pull off and stop. When it got on the flat bed is when I notice a whole damn pad was missing.
Had the vent window in the back of my ’82 malibu exit stage right on a main street in upstate ny. Got out, stopped traffic, put it back in, never fell out again.
MUCH more terrifying- headed west on I70 in Nebraska when an overloaded honda odyssey travelling east ejected its left rear wheel/tire at hwy speeds. Luckily, the hwy was narrowed from 2 lanes to one for construction, and the buick in front of me and i slowing down to 55. At that moment, the mounted tire, still rolling at well above 65 mph, rolled down into, along the flat bottom of the trapezoidal median “ditch” before it hit the “ramp” of the left shoulder on our side of the road. it flew clear over the Buick in front of me, and I was able to grab enough of my sprinter’s brakes to slow enough and move left a couple feet to see it fly within inches of the passenger A pillar right in front of my coworker before it disappeared into the adjacent cornfield. Incident collision speed could have been near 90 mph had it hit. Still cant believe that happened.
1996 Mazda Protege. Mazdas all used to have their exhausts rust in the same spot (just in front of the rear suspension), and my folks’ Mazda was no different. I was dring from Ottawa to my folks to give my dad back the car. It was already leaking like hell and making a ton of noise when I stopped for dinner, I was somewhat surprised to walk out of KFC to find out that the pipe and muffer were gone after the rust spot.
Luckily, Canadian Tire had a free installation sale on exhaust parts that weekend. Sure it was a crap part, but we didn’t pay a lot for that muffler, and it lasted until my friend sold it with 250K kms on it.
I’ve had a muffler leap to freedom on two very different cars of mine: a Reliant Scimitar GTE and a Ford F-150. It’s exciting!
I had my drivers side front wheel come off my 67 MGB while do 40mph.
I tapped the bakes for a corner and heard the zipper sound. I knew what was next and grabbed the parking brake. It was too late though and it spun off. A friend was with me and there was a cop a couple cars back. We just lifted the front end while my friend put the wheel back on. Nursed it home with the cop following me. Took a few days to source a new hub and brake rotor. No other damage happened.
I should’ve added these were wing knock-offs I had on it
this happened to me in a Lemons race, in an Escort.
This happened to a friend in his EXP (which, amazingly, i have seen more and more in the pages of autopian than IRL since about 1996). Essentially an escort gt with a funkier 2 door body, but still just 4 bolts. 2 bolts still worked, and they werent across from each other. he finished the last 30 mile of his trip at about 5mph