Warning if any of you have Aftermarket wheels on your car and you get a flat tire or your tire blows out and roadside assistance comes to help or you put the spare tire on yourself. This applies if you have aftermarket wheels with a bigger wheel hub. One of the tires blew out on the Corolla. The insurance company was called and they sent out road side assistance. Make sure the road assistance guy takes off the hub centric ring off of your wheel hub if it has one, before putting your spare tire on. The road assistance guy did NOT take the hub centric ring off and just put the spare tire on the wheel that blew out. Supposedly he had a tough time putting the spare on. I wasn't driving nor was I in the car, but that spare tire flew off the car while driving around 25 miles per hour. Thankfully no injuries occurred but the bottom of the Corolla was scraped, the driver's fender was bent in, and the rotor shield was bent up. Good thing the wheel didn't come off on the freeway, otherwise it would have been bad.
For some of you who don't know what a wheel hub is. It is that circlular part where your wheel is attached to your car, basically it holds your wheel to the car via several bolts. If you look at your stock/ factory wheel, that hole right in the middle of the wheel goes directly over your car's wheel hub. But on an aftermarket wheel that hole in the middle of the wheel is usually bigger than stock/ factory wheels so when you put your aftermarket wheel on, there will be a ring shaped gap between your aftermarket wheel and and the circular ring of the wheel hub. Wheel shops usually put hub centric rings on the wheel hub to fill in this gap to stabilize the aftermarket wheel.
Because the road assistance guy did not take off the hub centric ring, the spare tire was not sitting flush on the wheel hub but rather it was sitting on the hub centric ring instead. Stock/factory wheels are made to fit exactly on the your car's wheel hub so it will sit flush, but there was that hub centric ring there so it sat on that instead of the wheel hub. Because of this there was a gap between my spare wheel and the wheel hub. So after a few miles of driving, the wheel lug nuts came off the car and hence, with nothing to hold the spare wheel to the Corolla, it flew off the car.
I didn't know about hub centric rings until this accident, as I bought my Corolla with aftermarket wheels already on it. The seller got rid of the stock wheels. Be safe everyone.
The black hub centric rings go on, around the protruding inner ring on the wheel hub.
For some of you who don't know what a wheel hub is. It is that circlular part where your wheel is attached to your car, basically it holds your wheel to the car via several bolts. If you look at your stock/ factory wheel, that hole right in the middle of the wheel goes directly over your car's wheel hub. But on an aftermarket wheel that hole in the middle of the wheel is usually bigger than stock/ factory wheels so when you put your aftermarket wheel on, there will be a ring shaped gap between your aftermarket wheel and and the circular ring of the wheel hub. Wheel shops usually put hub centric rings on the wheel hub to fill in this gap to stabilize the aftermarket wheel.
Because the road assistance guy did not take off the hub centric ring, the spare tire was not sitting flush on the wheel hub but rather it was sitting on the hub centric ring instead. Stock/factory wheels are made to fit exactly on the your car's wheel hub so it will sit flush, but there was that hub centric ring there so it sat on that instead of the wheel hub. Because of this there was a gap between my spare wheel and the wheel hub. So after a few miles of driving, the wheel lug nuts came off the car and hence, with nothing to hold the spare wheel to the Corolla, it flew off the car.
I didn't know about hub centric rings until this accident, as I bought my Corolla with aftermarket wheels already on it. The seller got rid of the stock wheels. Be safe everyone.
The black hub centric rings go on, around the protruding inner ring on the wheel hub.