Whilst heading down the Freshwater track from Rainbow Beach back to Double Island point etc we had a small incident where my right hand rear wheel came off the car and barrelled into the adjacent sand embankment. Four of my six wheel studs literally sheared off whilst driving. I suspect that two of the whell nuts may have vibrated loose (we had been driving some very badly corrugated tracks around Kin Kin most of the morning) allowing the wheel to vibrate enough to stress the remaing studs to breaking point.Coincidently I had changed a flat tyre on this particular wheel about a month ago.
So maybe the loose nuts had something to do with me.
Strangely didn't feel any vibration at any oint whilst driving but did hear a noise which I could not find when I stopped, put it down to the kayak tiedowns vibrating in the breeze and tightened them up a bit.
I had to leave the wife and 3 of my kids with one tag along about 3k into the Freshwater track and start the long walk back into Rainbow to get some phone reception (I forgot my phone and the wife's optus phone did not have reception). The first vehicle to drive past offered assistance and my wife asked if they would mind finding me and taking me to rainbow, to which they obliged and found me a kilometre or so down the track and picked me up and dropped me in town. From here I first rang Nissan's Roadside assist (who refused to help) but they did at least put me through to my insurance who did arrange for towing etc to get me out of there.
In the meantime almost every vehicle that drove past offered to help in some way or another and a couple of guys actually jacked the vehicle up and left it on a stand for us if we did manage to get some mechanical assistance. If these guys are Ausfish members they welcome to come and grab there stand at any time along with carton or two of your choice, just PM me to arrange.
Once I arrived back at the car (a couple of hours later via taxi's and long walks down bush tracks) we had to wait an hour or so for the towtuck to arrive. In this time all but one vehicle stopped and tried to offer assistance, food or water to us. Luckily we had an esky full of food and drinks so these weren't required but we just could not believe how many people were stopping to try to help. Might have been some good karma as I had stopped earlier in the day and changed a tyre for two ladies on one of the crappy corrugated dirt/gravel roads out around Kin Kin.
Anyway thanks to all that helped, we arrived back safely and repaired the car the following day. Now the battle starts with the Insurance company as when I called them the next day they said that this should not have been an insurable event but since they had already towed us and I had paid my excess that they will let that go, but now I have to try and get them to repair the panel damage caused by the wheel slamming up under the guard.
Kev
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Originally Posted by finga
