My bearing nut from my back left wheel snapped!

So i spent about an hour detailing my rims and tires using tire wet and rim polish/cleaner, and they looked great, this was at about 7pm. The next morning at 11:00am I came out and noticed that the center cap on my back left wheel had fallen off, upon putting it back in, I noticed that a large black bolt broken in the middle lay next to my tire. I then looked under the center cap again and noticed that the rest of the bolt was still stuck in. If i started driving, my wheel would have fallen off....

Since the time between the bolt being fine and the bolt being broken involved no driving, the only cause I can think of is someone tampering with the wheel or trying to steal my rims (which are stock, lol) I'm really not sure though.

I have never in my life heard of a bearing nut snapping. If anyone has heard of this happening please let me know.

Here are some pics (best i could do with my phone)

Piece broken off inside...




And the rest of the bolt...

 

Holy crap. Someone is trying to kill you..

If you need a quick replacement I could send you my old one.

 

Woww that's crazy man! Good thing you noticed it before driving it like that.
Some people just shouldn't live with the rest of us, or it just broke itself... weird...

 

ouch, good luck getting that bolt out of there. you might be better off buying a new axle. that bolt is pretty thick to have just snapped while parked like that.

 

looks like you'll need an axle too. that's crazy man. it's not that easy to break that bolt.

 

Good news, I ended up getting the bolt out of there. Basically I removed the rotor and bearing to get a good angle on the broken bolt. I used vise grips and it for some reason came out smoothly.

I can't imagine something like this happening to someone that doesn't know much about cars and just ignore it....

 

wow thats lucky you could get to it. if you hadnt noticed it, the plus side would be that you wouldnt have gotten up to much speed before the wheel fell off so you probably wouldnt be injured. it would have come flying off on the turn out of your driveway if not soon after. i bet there would be a ton of damage done though.

 

i dont get how you guys are saying that the wheel would have fallen off. all i figure would have happened is that since the axle bolt is no longer tight no power would be transferred to that wheel (or to the other rear wheel for that matter).

 

If your "bearing nut" unscrews/breaks/is taken out in a plot to kill you, there have nothing holding the wheel on besides the brake caliper.... it will most likely break from the excess play allowing the bearing to slide out, now the next part is where the wheel actually falls of the car haha.

 

now maybe im just being dense, but the wheel is bolted to the hub which is pressed into the wheel bearing so how would it fall out?

or, are you saying that the wheel bearing will separate and the hub will pop out along with the inner part of the bearing?