37/100 happy days - twice the danger, but at least it's free!

[tetsubinatu]

There's been a sort of knocking noise in the car recently. It was a little worrying, then a lot worrying. I told hubby I needed to take it to a mechanic and sure enough he grumped that his car never got any money. Which is true. But at this point I just wasn't prepared to drive any further than the mechanic's (less than a mile) without getting it checked, whatever he said.

No way we could afford to pay for anything more expensive than a missing screw for the next 2 weeks but I was determined to get it seen.

The mechanic hypothesised a drive shaft problem, drove it around the car park a bit then peered under the rear. He was just telling me he couldn't see the problem when he blanched and asked if I knew I was driving around with only 2 wheel nuts on my rear right wheel.

Um. No.

So he tightened the remaining nuts, which were very loose (eep), and moved a couple of nuts from the other wheels onto the problem wheel, telling me to stop by a wrecker and replace them when I could.

He accepted a case of coke for his trouble.

So, you know, the situation was a lot more dangerous than I had realised, but on the other hand, it was fixable pretty much instantly, and for free. I am very grateful to him!

Comments

[leviathan0999.livejournal.com]

Ah, it's story-time!

In 1986, I was living with my sister in Shirley, MA, and working at a factory in my current town of Pepperell, MA, and did not have a driver's license. (Yes, that was almost ten years after you'd have expected me to have one; I was a slow starter.) My solution to this dilemma was that I payed a friend and co-worker who lived in Pepperell at the time 5 bucks a ride to come get me, bring me to work, and drop me off afterwards at home. (That was $50/week, a significant portion of my paycheck, but it was worth it.)

One day, as I'm climbing into the pickup truck, Scott says, "I'm worried about the truck. There's something wrong with the engine. It's like knocking, thud-thud-thud! I'm sure it's something in the engine, because it gets faster when I go faster, and slows down when I go slower. And it's way worse when I'm turning left."

We pulled into the street, and, by gum, everything Scott described was absolutely true. Thud-thud-thud! Speeding and slowing with the car. Worse when turning left. As we're driving on a particularly windy road, we're passed by a car whose driver tries to yell something to us, but we can't hear them.

Then a few things happen all at the same time, although I process them separately.

The first thing I process is definitely not the first that happened, which is Scott saying, almost conversationally, "Jesus, Jonathan, there goes my tire!"

Happening a little ahead of that, but processed second, the pickup lurches forward and to the left, making a horrible, loud, screaming sound. It's hard for me to process it, because my brain is still working on teasing meaning out of "Jesus, Jonathan, there goes my tire," which is so alien to my experience that it might as well have been "Measles broke WGBH's sluice French!"

And then, I see it. At this point, while I'm noticing the horrible noise and pondering the significance of Scott's cryptic statement, all in that sort of stately slow motion, as happens in time of emergency, I see it in front of us, rolling and bouncing almost happily, like a puppy that's got free of his leash in a meadow full of squirrels, and suddenly, in my head, I'm seeing and hearing a pair of cartoon characters, Chauncey and Edgar, little old men who sometimes appeared in Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, almost always being calm, phlegmatic witnesses to insane goings-on, and commenting about them in a bored monotone:

"Say, Chauncey, there's something you don't see every day."

"What's that, Edgar?"

"There's an ocean liner sailing across the Minnesota prairie!"

Only in this case, it's:

"Say, Chauncey, there's something you don't see every day."

"What's that, Edgar?"

"There's a perfectly-good, brand-new tire rolling down the street ahead of us."

Then, and only then, did my brain put together the various pieces of evidence: thud-thud-thud, truck lurches forward and left, horrible screaming noise, "Jesus, Jonathan, there goes my tire," tire rolling down the street.... HOLY SHIT THE TIRE CAME OFF THE CAR!!!!! THE LUG NUTS WERE LOOSE AND THEY WORKED THEIR WAY FREE!!!!

The truck slid to a stop, and we got out and looked. The brake rotor looks like it's been sliced in a straight line with an industrial laser. When Scott gets it jacked up -- he's found a couple of the lugs, and he redistributes some from other tires to re-attach the tire -- the flat side is polished to a mirror finish.

And that's my story.

[tetsubinatu.livejournal.com]

Pretty cool story! :)