A guy I know has the 1995ish style F150 and his wheel fell off. He had taken it to a place a week before to have them look at the brakes. He said it had been driving weird ever since and then the wheel fell off. Now I am not much on spindle crap but from what I can tell, the spindle nut is still on there.. How could this have happened? From the pics does he have a case against them? He said " It's a family place we have been going for years the strange thing is I took it to them and it came back with the rims missing the hub cap in the middle only on the front too and they tried explaining to me that it can't have the cap but I have a pic of the truck prior with it but now there's a grease cap or something that comes out of it....."

Looks like the outer bearing failed. Did they have the rotor off to inspect or repack the wheel bearings? If so you may have a case.

You know, if it were me and i've been going there for years I'd go talk to the owner, figure out what they worked on for sure, if the assembley was in fact off, loosened..whatever, and i'd try to come to some sort of mutual agreement. If I couldn't reach an agreement with them, i'd say my peace of being a loyal customer to them, tell them I felt their not doing me right and I would'nt be back. Then i'd be on my way and fix it myself or take it somewhere and chalk it up to a lesson learned.

I told him whatever the case never to go back there. I just don't get how the wheel could just fall off, though maybe theres something I don't know.

It looks as if the outer bearing failed.

He had taken it to a place a week before to have them look at the brakes.

As for the brakes all they do is pull the tires and look through the inspection hole. There is no need to mess with the spindle or nut. So what your friend needs to do is ask the shop what they exactly did before saying anything about the wheel failure. Then you got them! But more that likely this is going to fall back on your friend for lack of maintenance on his part. If the truck has been driving funny then it should been up to him to inspect and find out what's going on instead of driving the truck till the wheel fell off.

This guy doesn't know the difference between the spindle nut and a lugnut so thats why he took it somewhere. Not sure what "funny" means as far as how it drove but maybe it didn't seem bad enough to worry too much about. I mean theres a lot of people who will drive it as long as it goes from A to B.. I just don't get how a bearing failure can just jump the nut. Unless I am thinking about it wrong.