TLDR; Mechanic missed tightening the wheel nuts on both front wheels after a service. Daughter pulled over seconds from disaster. And sorry about the flair, there's nothing super appropriate.
I've been going to the same mechanic for years with all the family cars. Took my daughter's (17, red P's, bugger all interest and experience with cars) in for a service last week and knew the CV joints needed to be done. This was Thursday and they were taking an extra day off Friday for a longer long weekend.
Picked it up and they told me there was probably an issue with the gear box because they took it for a drive and it was making a bit of noise. My daughter drove it home with me following, called me and said something's very wrong, so I told her to stop somewhere and we'll swap cars so I can have a listen. I drove it about a k before I turned around back to the mechanic who said it was probably the new CV's that were exposing issues that we hadn't noticed but it would be fine for the weekend, bring it back Tuesday and we'll have another look.
She was on her way home this morning (Monday) and called to say it's gotten worse, pulled over and not game to go any further. OK, up we go to drop her off to work while I organise a towie.
He gets there, looking at the best way to get it up on the bed, and I could see he's looking at the front making odd faces. I ask him what he sees and he shows me - "look at the driver side", ok, looks normal, "now look at the passenger side. Front wheel is not quite where it's supposed to be". I see it, that would explain something.
He gets down for a closer look at the passenger side and starts swearing, tells me I'm going to want pics of this. NO nuts. He decides the best course is to jack it up, get one nut from each of the other wheels just to get it on and off the truck without further damage. Lifts the front passenger side and of course the wheel just falls off and then you can see that one of the bolts has sheared off and the rim has been spinning on the disc. One of the pics you can see the metal shavings in the rim.
So he cleans up the remaining bolts a little, gets a nut from each of the back wheels, goes to the drivers side front and says "oh mate, you have to see this" as he is undoing the nuts by hand. Tightens them all, gets the fucked up wheel back on and we're good to get it on and off the truck without further damage.
So the noises that they thought might have been the gearbox turns out to be both front wheels flopping around on finger tightened nuts.
I did tell her to only drive locally just in case but locally for us is some tight winding roads with rock face on one side and massive drops into the bush on the other. It's no exaggeration to say they could have killed her. She might not know much about cars but thankfully she was aware enough to think 'nope, that's bad' and pull over.
Looking forward to the convo when they get my note with the key that I slid under the door.
Edit: Holy shit, I can't believe how common this is! So many 'yeah, this happened to me as well'. Gobsmacked.
