I posted about this in another thread but it wasn't my finest moment and haven't been to happy to talk about it. A few months back I was pulling out from my street and gunned it. In a few seconds I was doing the speed limit of sixty so I let off of the throttle. As soon as I did that, I started getting a horrible shaking. I instantly completely let off the gas and started look for a place to pull off of the highway. There were no side medians but there was a turnaround in the middle of the highway only about 50 yards away. As I'm making my escape plan I feel the car drop in the back accompanied by a loud scraping noise and I see my left rear wheel pass me rolling down the center grass median. The box comes to a quick stop halfway off the road and halfway blocking the fast lane. From the point it started to shake to where the wheel came off was only 4-5 seconds. I'm guessing I was only doing 40mph by then. As I retrieve my wheel I access the situation and see that all of my lug bolts had come off. You would think there would have been some kind of vibration from the lug bolts coming loose and I would have felt it before the wheel came off. There wasn't! Only that 4-5 second vibration. This made me start to think what went wrong and I believe there was a few things I shouldn't have done. First was I used some generic wheel spacers on the back and I used gasket maker to hold them in place until I attached the wheel. That right there was the worse idea ever! The second bad thing I did was not rechecking my lug bolts after driving the car for a little bit. I had done a few 100+mph sprints and put about 500 miles on it so I had assumed everything was good. If I had checked the torque on them I might have caught that they were coming loose. After I limped home with my tail between my legs I checked the other side and those too were about to come loose. They maybe were only at 20 FT Lbs by then. My theory is that the gasket maker I used to secure the crappy spacer gave enough space and cushion to allow vibration that worked the lug bolts loose. I also believe the aftermarket lug bolts that came with the spacers were not long enough.
When the wheel came off, it flopped around in the wheel well rubbing against the rotor and caliper causing all kinds of groves to the inside of the wheel. One grove was so deep that it cracked the wheel. So much damage was caused to the wheel that it wasn't repairable.
If you're asking why I used those spacers? I had them laying around and they were just the right thickness for my wheels to clear the coilovers. I was too lazy and cheap to buy the right ones. Completely a dumb move and I can't argue that. I did buy some ECS spacers for the front that have worked great so far. I'm just grateful I didn't kill anyone or my car. Besides the damage to the wheel, the only other damage was to the leading edge of the bumper cover as the wheel rolled out and some touch-up paint will fix that.
That leads me to my next bad decision. I put the only complete set I had at the time on and they are from a 987. Not the worse thing but 987 wheels are skinnier than 986 wheels and it wasn't the look I was after. Semi-desperate that I am, I had a customer offer to trade me some 19 inch wheels for a set of 17x8.5 wheels for his boxster that he's turning into a spec. I prefer 17's or 18's but I can live with 19's. So I drive up to Dallas and we switched out the wheels at his house. I get a look at the back side of them and they're cheap knock-offs.
Disappointed at that I still go ahead with the deal. I figure I'd try them out. Those 18's were knock offs and they seem to perform as good as the factory 17's. It only took five minutes of driving before I realized that they suck. The 19's are boat anchors and it feels like I lost 50hp! The ride quality is a little worse too. They looked good on his car but on mine it might be a little too much.
On a good note, while I was up there I got a free alignment and ROW tune from a friend at Porsche of Plano! I kept getting an O2 code from the rear sensors even with the O2 sensor foolers. No check engine light since then.
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