wheel came off
 

Wife was driving jeep. Heard a flat tire sound. Checked was fine and went away.

2 miles later at low speed front wheel came.off. jeep is sitting on wheel.

Im heading there any suggestions? What am I looking for in terms of damage and causes.

Fender is done.

Stud bolts, lug nuts, bearings.

You lose the hub assembly or no?

K. All I have is pic atm.

Take a tow truck.

not a very good picture, as we cant see the hub assembly or stud bolts.

Isn't that supposed to be attached to something? Haha jk.

Wife took the picture I'm not there yet.

It would help if you put the lug nuts back on. jk

Im guessing an odd hub failure or all the stubs broke off.

And... I moved it and locked keys inside. Today sucks.

Looks like a hub assebly/bearing failure to me. Same thing happened to my Xj, but it was caused by VERY bad death wobble... pulled the entire two month old assebly apart. It's a $110 part at Autozone and generally not hard to replace, unless it's completely broken as yours looks to be. We ended up welding the half of the hub assebly that's connected to the wheel to a metal workbench so we could get the wheel off. Good luck with the repair!

happend to my dad in his zj. 60mph tire beat him down the road lol. none was hurt and his fender is jacked up but it still goes like a jeep

does not look like a hub failure, as no lug nuts are there, Looks like under tightened lug nuts.

Agreed, could be broken studs, not likely all broke though.

Good point, I didn't take notice to that. I bet the threads on those wheel studs are toast now... :oops:

^^This.

Lug nuts worked loose, then broke the last few studs probably. Had this happen last summer on me, started a thread on it as well. Did you have a rotation or brakes done recently?

Stop at Autozone or similar. Grab new studs and install them if the hub bearing is still intact.

To Kopecki: Yo, im from Cementon originally! Live in NEPA now.


So, we put the spare on, appears to have just been loose nuts.

Wheel & Tire are destroyed, and spare is pretty beat up as well.

Going to need new rim(s) (good reason to buy black ones!) Is there a typical standard for the kind of rim for 98 cherokee when searching?

Also, needs new posts too, local guy is taking care of that for me this week. Fender is destroyed as well. Going to keep an eye out for replacement.

I only got the jeep at the start of the winter, that tire was inspected (removed) during inspection about 900 miles ago.


Thanks for the posts everyone.

- hudock

For rim size, 5 on 4.5" is the bolt pattern. Anything with that bolt pattern will fit.

Holy crap, thank God your Wife was not injured!

Do you have the right lug bolts for those wheels?

I have made a habit to take a torque wrench to my wheels at least once a month just to make sure they are all tight.

I lost a wheel once while driving a 76 cutlass supreme and it passed me up on the highway, glad it was the rear wheel and not the front, but we did think that it was the local trouble makers that loosened up a bunch of wheel bolts at my workplace at the time.
Several people lost wheels while driving that day but luckily nobody got hurt.

Cool, I live in Fountain Hill now, but I used to live over in Hokendauqua (Lived there nine years and still don't know how to properly spell it...)

Any wheel with a 5x4.5" bolt pattern should work as long as you don't go too wide or get a wheel with a crazy offset since you're still using stock tires and don't have your fenders cut. Check out American Racing Steelies (Google them). I've never seen then on a Jeep before and they have some pretty wicked designs. I had them on a Volkswagen Gti and I loved them, they are tough as hell. They rode great for being 15x12's with crazy offset on a lowered Volkswagen haha.

There is a guy on craiglist selling these..

"4 ~ 15x7 Steel Alloy Rims I purchased for Jeep Grand Cherokee and then got rid of the truck~ never put them on~they are in great shape~Asking just $150"

I think they look good, would they be worth it if I can get him down to $100 or $125? They sort of look like Cragar's to me. Black on black looks good even with stock tires no?

It would be 50$ just to have a gray stock wheel shipped to me from ebay.

Glad you're all ok. That would have been pretty scary. I found a replacement fender for you here: http://www.jeep4x4center.com/jeep-bo...herokee-xj.htm Not too expensive, considering. You'd have to paint it, though. teamcherokee.com has body parts too, but I can't link you to a specific page on that site. You'll have to search. Of course there's always the JY.

Those look like a pretty good deal. IT shouldn't be too expensive to get them powdercoated either if you'd be interested.

As stated, I'd hit the junkyard for a fender. It's usually pretty tough to find a drivers side fender in good condition though. I've been looking since the beginning of the summer 2010 for a '97 fender...

I'm going to check out Harry's you pull it! on monday for the fender, its only 10m from me.

If this guy is willing to do $100 on these rims I'm going to grab them, if not, I'm going to order a stock ebay replacement.

Thanks for all the input everyone.

- hudock

Got the rims for $100

nice! good steal, they will look good on there

Kings powdercoating down in Allentown does great work if your interested.

I was on the other end of run-away YJ Jeep wheel once. I was just glad I was able to swerve and not have it go up over the hood. I was not a happy camper that day.

So I drove 240miles round trip.

Turns out those wheels are chrome arghhh.... can chrome be powdercoated?

I believe that you will need to remove the chrome to get a decent paint job on the wheels.

With black jeep. Will chrome be ok? They ar good and plain..

I think it is a matter of preference. Try them and and see how you like them.

X2

The chrome will need to be removed or atleast roughed up pretty good for any type or paint to be applied. Kings Powdercoating in Allentown can sandblast them for you. Last time I had wheels done there they charged $40 a wheel to sandblast and powdercoat them. Not a bad price at all.

Well the chrome turned out ok. But I need caps. There 3" any recommendations?

I will post pic later app keeps crashing. Installing headunit tonight too.

try here for capshttp://www.summitracing.com/search/?...r%20caps&dds=1

I personally think center caps cost too much for what they are. You could buy a new wheel for the cost of four center caps... which only equal out to like an eighth of the metal of a wheel. Do what I did... just paint the hubs black, or silver if you'd prefer. (I have black wheels, so I painted mine black)

NIce to know you got it all together and everyone is safe. You take a tq wrench to the new wheels?:bangin:

I think they look good man!Center caps,maybe keep an eye on ebay.

Defiantly re-torque the lugs like mentalbreakdown00 said after 50 to 100 miles.It is more important to do this with aluminum wheels but lugs come loose on steel wheels just the same.

J may paint the center and posts silver/chrome. Will our up a pic then

So, I painted the posts and the cap hole. Turned out pretty good i think! If you look close you can see its been painted, but more then 3 ft away it looks stock.

Also pic of new headlights and damage to fender.

- hudock

Looks good. The best part about spray paint is if you scratch it or anything you can touch it up super easy. Back when I was using spray painted stock wheels I used to touch them up all the time in parking lots and stuff... It was great.

That fender is a doosy though. If you find a new fender and want to donate your old one rather than throwing it out, let me know since we live close(ish). I'll be doing a front end conversion on my Xj to the newer front end and am having one heck of a time finding a good drivers side fender in the junkyard. I can't see spending $35 on a fender that's all banged up. I can throw you the price for scrap weight on the fender if you'd like. I can bang out those dents a bit and rock it until I find a good one... It'd be worth the couple bucks in my opinion. If you'd like to talk about it any further, pm me.