I was heading off to an ad-tech conference this morning (with sessions like “Data Collaboration in Action: Using Clean Rooms and First-Party Data To Deliver Outcomes”), which required me to walk to the train like a person with a real job. Though I’ve spent most of my life avoiding any occupation I could easily explain to my wife’s friends, a delayed flight yesterday meant I had no trouble mimicking the tired and depressed low-stare of the office worker.
Like many of you, my brain is in a constant state of processing every vehicle that passes my eye. Internal processing power was in short supply at the moment, so I made it quite far past the library before something deep in my frontal lobe alerted me that something was amiss.
Behind me, in the parking lot of the local library, was a brand new Ford Explorer sitting at a strange angle. It’s almost as if the front wheel wasn’t there. I had to go back and look.
That’s not good.
To clarify: This is a couple of spots into the parking lot. It could have been dropped there? I assumed it was driven, but the road looks clear and there were not obvious scrapes in the parking lot (it’s wet, so that may contribute to it being hard to see).
There was a tire here at some point, but no more. The wheel barely exists in the form you think of as a traditional wheel. I’ve seen this happen before with a carbon fiber wheel on a track where it just self-destructed after a curb-hit because of the nature of carbon fiber. This isn’t a CF wheel, which means that it had to be ground down in some way.
You’ll notice there’s a few scrapes along the driver’s door, which is probably indicative of a collision with something. Did the Explorer crash first and then that collapse the front suspension, or did the tire/suspension fail first and then the vehicle collided with another vehicle or a wall?
Or is this some kind of very specific art piece. Would that explain why the vehicle seems to have been perfectly dropped here? I’m a little lost here as to how the vehicle wound up in this library parking lot and why it wasn’t taken to a collision center.
Please provide your best theory, and put it in the comments. Both real and completely ridiculous theories accepted/encouraged.
This Explorer obviously didn’t want to go to “SUV-school” this morning and had to be dragged in and almost made it.
Years ago, as I approached a red light I noticed the Neon stopped in the next lane seemed to have underlighting. I thought, “Haven’t seen that for a while” but, once I got close enough, I realized it was actually the oil pan glowing red and the engine sounded like ball bearings in a tumble dryer. When I stopped next to them and told the driver what I had seen they just shrugged and said, “It’s fine,” before the light turned green and they continued on their way. I’m sure they didn’t make it very far.
In fairness the damage was done. The only thing that driver could have done at that point to make the situation less shitty would have been to get off the road ASAP rather than be a jerk by having the engine explode while in traffic and becoming a roadblock.
Somewhat related story:
A friend of mine used to drive a bottled water truck. His employer was notorious for stinginess which is NOT the same as cheapness.
As he was driving the oil light came on. He radioed it in and was told to go buy some oil and apply for reimbursement. My friend knew that reimbursement would never come so he radioed back for them to send someone out with oil. They refused. As they went back and forth on who should bet the oil the engine started making bad noises, lost power, then finally crapped out altogether. What should have been a $ couple of bottles of oil with no vehicle down time turned into a $$,$$$ engine replacement with weeks of vehicle down time.
So who was in the wrong here? I mosty blame the company since my friend couldn’t trust them to just pay him back for a couple of bottles of oil out of petty cash. They also could have put a few bottles of oil in each truck for exactly such situations. It was their truck, therefore their responsibility.
OTOH my friend could have, should have pulled over and continued the argument without blowing up the engine. It’s a mystery to me why they dispatcher did not insist he do just that.
TBF my friend got no blowback from this.
I’m somewhat glad my wagon had painted on tires so it didn’t care about the pinch flat i got running over a 2×4. Drove into work fine on 0psi.
A couple of things:
First, Explorers are known for front hub failures, though that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
Second, a couple of years ago my brother noticed some small hairline cracks on a couple of his Explorer’s wheels. During a maintenance appointment, he pointed these out to service tech. The tech immediately took the wheels off and dismounted the tires to inspect the wheels. The cracks were small enough that they could’ve been repaired, but the tech said that wouldn’t solve the problem as they weren’t caused by impacts, but rather were the result of poorly cast wheels with built in weaknesses that would just keep failing. He told my brother the wheels would eventually fall apart. The bad castings were a known problem, though apparently no service alert or recall was ever issued. Dealers were just told to replace the wheels when found.
Don’t know if bad wheels are what happened here, but maybe.
“My front wheel is making a funny noise, could you take a look at it for me? I think I might need new brakes.”
“Customer states” there seems to be a noise from the front end?
Customer states noise from right rear on acceleration, occurred after you guys changed the oil.
and that’s why you don’t run red light[sabers]
Krishna! Krishna! Have you heard the Good News?
No, not that news, thank goodness, the news that David blew an engine and we’re trying to help him buy another. You can purchase some Karma right here: GoFundMe Link
Kidding about it being good news. I hope that was obvious. If not, you might be on spectrum like me.
Maybe you have, but be sure to post this elsewhere!
Challenge Accepted
Probably been driving it like that for two weeks and didn’t notice. Library books were due today.
Maybe had the damage elsewhere and towed to the spot by a flatbed. Don’t you watch murder mysteries? They always move the body.
Whatever happened, Ford will blame Firestone.
Flat tire was driven on till it blew completely off the rim, then they continued to drive on the rim for quite a while, destroying it and much of the suspension. The stupidity of some astounds me.
Could this be the result of a pesky wheel lock or parking boot? As well as a hefty dose of “ignoring-the-world-outside-the-window”?
Hmm how did ya get this user name?
That’s a great rimshot. Did you do that with your phone or do you carry a point and shoot with you everywhere you go?
Ive seen that kind of thing happen when people hit a curb at a decent speed. The scrapes that look like it hit a wall are probably from wheel and tire parts being thrown and then impacting.
A couple of years ago they put a new roundabout on the road that goes past the huge and confusing housing estate I live on. A few weeks later I spotted a fresh pair of tracks going straight over the roundabout, and a followed a line of freshly ground aluminium back in to the estate. The front tyres had come off the rims on impact, and the genius driver had decided to try to drive home rather than park up on a road that coincidentally leads to the local police station.
About 100 yards later I found the first tyre, knocked off the rim when the car had come off the road at the first bend. The double line of freshly ground aluminium lead me to a row of parked cars with jaunty new dents, then the other front tyre again ripped off on a kerb.
I followed the wheel tracks for about half a mile, with the car pingponging off of parked cars, until I found it parked off road with the bumper neatly touching a house.
Drunks make really bad drivers. And really, really bad getaway drivers.
I disagree that the majority of the damage resulted from the wheel being ground down. If this was a seized wheel dragged several miles, why would the top of the wheel also be severely damaged? I would expect damage to be more localized to the part of the wheel that was dragged.
I wonder if this is a case where the driver collided wheel first with a tall curb at a high speed? It is odd how flat the wheel is, but it is also possible the wheel was dragged after a collision caused it to break apart. I also wonder if this could be some sort of manufacturing defect?
I concur with those who suspect this was a drunk driver. Although if that is the case, I can honestly say I’m impressed with their parking skills. Many sober drivers with four functioning wheels struggle to park within the lines. This driver not only parked within the lines, but also managed to center this vehicle perfectly within the parking spot.
(Edit: after watching a few youtube videos, I’m changing my opinion; this was presumably just some drunk idiot that hit something and kept driving on a seized wheel. I’m still impressed with their parking skills, though).
I agree with the assessment that the bearing seized at some point, either from dragging the wheel or as the original problem which caused the wheel to stop spinning.
While 2/3 of the Autopian readership just said: “What is a W B Yeats and is it covered with chocolate?”. This would have to be the oddest reference in a headline to ever appear on this site. Lovin it.
The rest are wondering if he meant Brock Yates.
Brilliant title.
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
I’m glad you enjoyed it!
Wheel fell apart, and yet the centre held
Maybe G.M. bought one to reverse engineer and that was far as their engineers got before giving up.
I once saw a full size Ford pickup with a huge chunk of a rim missing and along with the tire in a spot away from the pickup. As I creeped by in the adjacent lane, there was a pothole that was maybe a 1/4 the width of the truck with a chunk of the rim about foot or two from the edge of the pothole.
Traffic was such that I continued on as I hate rubber-necking. I cannot imagine there was no damage to the suspension on the truck.
So something like that could explain the wheel damage, but the rest of it could only have been done by weather controlling space lasers and alien transport beams to move the Explorer away from the incident.
Nothing to see here…move along.
Clearly this is the work of aliens. Pretty sure I see marks from the laser blasts…
They were trying to replicate this bike- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX3A7GLtFqM, but forgot to grind the rear wheel down as well
A girl in my senior class of high school did this in 2008 in her ‘95 Chevy Corsica. Tire went flat 8 or 9 miles from school and she just kept driving. By the time she got to school, the tire was gone and so was much of the steel wheel.
She left some awesome imprints/gouges in the asphalt of the school parking lot, though. And some smoke screens. The poor Corsica survived somehow. The event also made it into the yearbook with a photo of the parking lot and car damage. When asked why she didn’t pull over once the tire went flat, she said “I didn’t know. I just thought my car was making a funny noise.”
My senior year of high school I drove for DAYS with my car making an increasingly horrible grinding sound every time I hit the breaks (although “hitting the brakes” became more like “pushing the brake pedal as hard as I could with both feet”). By the time I offhandedly mentioned it to my dad, I had ground through a good chunk of the rotors.
Ah, youth.
Can I just add that my dad is a CAR GUY? Mechanic, sales, hot rod restoration, etc. He was … not impressed.
One of the local farmers had a flat on his trailer, but didn’t notice (or decided to just drive on it anyway). He ended up leaving a double gouge out of the tarmac all the way through the village, which was visible for years.
On a trailer, being towed by a big vehicle, it’s REALLY easy to not notice a flat. We were pulling a utility trailer behind a really big RV cross country one year, and a tire blew on the trailer. By the time someone pulled along side and got our attention so we could pull over and check, the tire was completely gone, and we were just rolling on the steel wheel. Inside the RV, nothing was towing any different, so we had no idea.
Towed to parking lot by 1994 Ford Ranger, abandoned like a Detroit boat
You see lots of stuff like this on the YouTube Channel “Customer States”. People can be really, really, really dumb.
“another shop” probably did this to the rim
Customer refused repairs
Not enough spray foam, though.
Or rachet straps holding the suspension arms in place.
I wonder how many miles (km) it takes to grind this much off?
Somebody needs to make a YouTube and let us know.