Wheel came off from slight swerve on flat pavement

[Indarkness]

On the bright side I found where Ford allowed Goodyear to have “Wrangler” to be written on the territory MT tire, without having to crawl under the bronco.
In all seriousness this is terrible, I am glad you are ok and no one got hurt.

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[Grumpy]

That spindle looks to be contaminated with a lot of impurities. Where the spindle snapped you can definitely see clean casted material that was melded perfectly, then the other half of the fracture is heavily contaminated that did not meld effectively, which caused the failure. Somewhere in the casting process, contamination occurred which prevented proper heat meld throughout the casting.

I focused in and changed contrast to highlight the fractured area so you can see what I'm stating.

 

[Grumpy]

Any casting performed, and impurities by way of contamination are present, will cause the casted part to fail. The contamination will prohibit full melding and in return reduce strength in that area of the cast.

The fracture was probably there from after it left assembly line. The only thing holding that spindle together was the back half of the fractured area. The evasive steering OP performed trying to avoid the animal just finished what was already there.

 

[87-Z28]

Any casting performed, and impurities by way of contamination are present, will cause the casted part to fail. The contamination will prohibit full melding and in return reduce strength in that area of the cast.

The fracture was probably there from after it left assembly line. The only thing holding that spindle together was the back half of the fractured area. The evasive steering OP performed trying to avoid the animal just finished what was already there.

Just because this part was cast doesn’t make it “bad” or so brittle it fractures immediately when overloaded. Cast steel parts can be manufactured to have some ductility with reasonable elongation, bend before break. Of course that is one of the challenges with the casting process, since gas voids and inclusions from alternative materials can occur if done poorly. This causes imperfections and stress concentrations. This part was most surely designed to be fairly ductile wrt steel composition, casting process, and heat treatment. No need to stress because it was cast.

Very poor castings with large voids or impurities can drastically increase local stresses and cause the onset of fractures. These fractures can grow rapidly and cause immediate failure under high loading. Or can grow slower and then fail under lower loading, which may be what happened to the OP.

Nice photo cleanup by grumpy. This is the first image my old eyes can actually see. The image does suggest a very large void/impurity in the casting wall. Which would cause very high stress concentrations. It is hard to imagine this part was not inevitably going to fail.

 

[87-Z28]

I think the pictures tell a pretty clear story actually. I would second the recommendations above that you report this incident to NHTSA. Yours may very well have been a "one off" defect, however, one is not none, and NHTSA collects this data for a reason...if similar failures pop up it will help track down the cause of the defect, and possibly help keep others from going through this. All kidding aside, that's a safety issue

absolutely needs to be reported for safety reasons. Good castings can be made, but this was not good. Begs to question why? Hopefully just a random mistake but needs to be chased down.

 

[Overboost]

Definitely looks like a casting quality issue…that supplier is going to be busy certifying material and writing a corrective action in the very near future!

 

[7sKnuckledragger]

First new vehicle I ever bought was a 2006 F150 crew cab XLT 4x4, man it was a cool truck. Well at about 1900 miles on the clock my then GF started the truck while another friend of ours was getting in the passenger seat and BOOM! Passenger airbag went off. No impacts no off-road nothing. Started the truck and the airbag deployed. Well I towed it to the dealer and contacted Ford. About 30 days later I had a brand new 2007 f150 with some extra options. Fords communications sucked but they did me right. Since then I have bought 3 more new F150’s (newest is a 21) a new superduty And a motorhome with the new 7.3 in the E450. Ford will do you right but you gotta make the right noise
Good luck OP

cheers

 

[Rusty Sheckelford]

Lol at calling the police; next time just call nationwide! The important thing is you're okay and machines can be fixed. Only other advice I can offer is to not take "driving till the wheels fall off" so literally.

 

[Ninjak]

Glad you're OK. That is one hell of a break. The sunny side of things is everything connected stayed connected!

 

[IROCnRoll]

It looks like you are doing a 2015 Doc Brown Hover Conversion.

 

[Butzy]

This reminds me of my childhood when I unwrapped the foil from a chocolate bunny expecting a fulfilling bite of heaven. Very disappointed and highly concerned.

 

[sjudas]

vehicle: bronco badlands sasquatch lux 2023
reserved date: 7/20/2020
build date/week: 4/13/2023
picked up: 05/11/2023

I picked up my bronco from Stephens auto center on Thursday May 11, 2023 and drove it ~300 miles back to Ohio. Over the next 2 weeks I babied my bronco and added on another ~400 miles, refusing to even take the doors/top off until heavy rain to verify it was sealed good. I never even used any of the hero switches just to see how it works on country service gravel/dirt roads.

(shout out to Stephens Auto Center on excellent service and getting me in and out the door quickly with my new Bronco!)

May 26th at approximately 2:30 am, was on a multi-lane road traveling roughly 50 mph, noticed animal on right shoulder of the road, switched lanes to give more room. Upon getting closer the animal decided to cross the road and I swerved back into the right hand lane and felt like instantly had a flat tire. multiple warning sensors came out the dash: antilock break fault, hill start assist warning, and pre-collision assist not available. The swerve was very gradual/soft compared to what I've had to do in past vehicles to avoid incidents and for this low mileage/new vehicle to handle itself like that just worries me that there is more to come in the future. I am grateful, that I was not on a high speed road and there was no traffic in the other lanes/passing vehicles/merging/etc when this took place.

Due to being on the road, and it in the middle of the night, saw a parking lot roughly 200 yards ahead in which I drove to very slow with emergency hazards on. when turning into the parking lot, felt like power steering was out and due to going ~10 mph it turned very wide and made some thudding noises. Once I was safely off the road, got out to inspect the damage and found my wheel basically came off... which I'd assume happened during the turn process as it just handled like a low aired tired the rest of the time.

notified non-emergency local police, however I didn't realize they don't do anything for non accidents and due to me getting it off the road for them, they stated they didn't need to tow it or fill out an incident report. notified insurance for roadside service, and they estimated ~45 minutes. There is a Ford garage roughly 10 minutes from there in which the tow truck took me to and dropped me off at roughly 4:00 AM. Family then came out to pick me up at the dealership. I returned later that day during business hours to hand over my keys and see what was the next step. They never offered me a loaner/rental/etc and basically said anything of this nature is under warranty in the first ~60 days I believe and it'll be repaired free of charge.

As of Friday 6/16 they updated me that they are waiting on a backordered part, the stabilizer bar.

Everyone jokes, asking if the animal was worth my vehicle. Based on how easily it came apart, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

I'm at a loss what I'm suppose to do, just wait for the vehicle to be repaired and go back to driving it? This was a vehicle I've waited nearly 3 years for and spent a small fortune on. I wanted to fully customize it, but I'm worried any/all customizations would void future warranties and whose to say more issues aren't around the corner. because they fixed the one side, will this happen to the passenger side/rear wheels next? and no matter what you do, a vehicle repaired is never new. I'm terrified to even attempt any offroad obstacle in it just seeing how it handled on flat pavement.

I've called Stephens auto center just to inform them and ask if they had a number for me to get in touch with ford, they directed me to the same customer service line on the website. (1 800 392 3673) I have called them 3 times and always get disconnected or passed around/waiting on hold and never get to talk to anyone.

I just wanted to bring awareness to this, see if anyone has any input on why/how it happened and if there is anything to do moving forward, otherwise thanks for letting me vent.

That is crazy. You are lucky it didn't cause a major crash. I can't believe the spindle broke. Hopefully it was a single defective part and not a recall issue.

 

[userdude]

Duct tape'll fix it.

 

[Montducati]

Glad you’re okay OP and this should not happen to any vehicle let alone a $70k Bronco. You deserve a full replacement Bronco IMO.
Hats off to the other expert members that chimed in. Some very impressive analyzing!
This incident makes me wonder about an unfortunate accident I had with my 2017 F150 Raptor a few years ago. I hit a concrete divider on a 4 lane highway spun around two full turns and hit the guard rail on the other side! The drivers side rear tire/wheel sheared completely off and disappeared into the night. To this day I could never understand why that was possible. This OP’s incident now makes me wonder if I had a similar issue.
I was also going to selfishly ask if my Braptor was equipped with the same knuckle as this Badlands; however, some of you thankfully cleared that up for me already.

 

[WCP-82]

This is getting a bit old that we have to start checking build dates to see if we might be a victim of bad batch suppliers. Early on it was bad batch lifters on the 2.7. I think I missed the bad Dana welds by less than two weeks. I know people awaiting delivery at my dealer that were built before mine that are stuck in delivery purgatory and I am driving mine. (Dirt Mountain probably?) Missed the wrong torqued lugs that caused a wheel to fly off by about three weeks. Now this with a build date a week before mine. So now I'm trying not to swerve too much.

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