What A Day!
I had one of the worst days ever today, and it could have been the last day for me and my little family too.
On Monday last week I had a new tyre fitted to the car, while I was there I asked the mechanic if he could move the front tyres to the back and put new on the front.
He was happy to help and I parted with my money and on my way I went, for the past couple of days I have been hearing a knocking noise, me and a friend who knows a lot about cars checked into it and we both came to the conclusion that it was a ball joint that was making the sound.
I had been on eBay earlier today looking at the price thinking that I would have to get it done as I want my car safe for my travels and decided to ask my mum if she could help out and lend me the money as they don't come cheap.
She said she would and we went and picked my little girl up from school and set off to my mums like I would do normally.
The noise from the wheel was getting louder, I have had a ball joint go before so I know that it is a gradual thing and not something that starts making a noise as fast as this was.
We hit a dual carriageway, in this country that means you can travel at 50 mph unless stated with road signs to do something different.
As I hit 50 mph the noise became louder and louder, my daughter was sat in the back making the comment that it sounded like the car was talking to us and it was just like chitty chitty bang bang
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQgiw-sxs5bnIXOENAuauGnKpg4PQTmlCKWji3EZnNBkdT_Uw_e
image from wikipedia.
I got 4 roads away from my mums and all of a sudden the back end of the car dropped down and went with a bang, it was like something you see on the crash test dummies on car programs, this made me put my foot on the break.
The car didn't stop.
As the car kept moving forward I told all in the car to hold on as I could see that we were going to plow into the car in front of us.
Quick thinking I took the chance of the hand break, why not? it has the name in the title of it, break. and the car slowly came to a standstill with nobody hurt other than the car itself.
I got out and saw that the car had dropped down and was scrapping on the back to wheels, I was just glad that everyone was ok.
I had to move my car before anyone went into the back of us, I decided to try and park it outside someone's house, and leave it there as I knew it would be safe until I could get it recovered.
As I turned the car, we heard this amazingly loud bang, and we could hear cracking and scrapping, my words were "WTF is going off now"
I got back out of the car and found that my rear wheel had come of my car and ripped through my bumper and the car wasn't going anywhere.
My wife looked shocked. we were in the middle of a busy road and nobody could get around us, i was just hoping that I could get the car up and wheel on as fast as possible.
This was not the case.
It turned out that the guys who had put the wheel on my car had only screwed in my locking wheel nut and left the others out, they where present in their places but not screwed in, the locking wheel nut had snapped and cursed my wheel to come off.
The kindness of strangers.
Out of nowhere a woman came to us and asked if we wanted the kids to go in her house to keep warm while I sorted the car out.
A older gentleman came out of his house to see what had gone off, he decided that he would help me and brought a better jack to get the car up.
For an hour I was working on this wheel as the bolt had snapped, the wheel had to be pulled from under the car and the angle of the car meant we couldn't jack it up until the wheel was removed.
At closer inspection the car looked like it was done forever, the back bumper was twisted and tangled, I don't know how i managed to get my jack under the car with out it going through the floor.
We got the wheel out, then we had to jack the car up to get the wheel back on, the disk was bent and the guard had been bent too which meant i had to make a quick diy bodge job to get the wheel back on.
When I started the car it was down so low that the car couldn't move, the guy who was with me thought that my rear axle had snapped with the impact of what had just happened.
I had an idea, I went in my car and used the hydraulics to higher my car, one problem though, this means that I can only drive at 25 mph, it goes into some kind of limp mode.
Once the car was up the car seemed to straighten itself out, when I dropped the hydraulics it was in perfect shape.
the guy then went around my car and found that all the wheels were loose and had not been tightened by the garage.
Trouble tomorrow.
I have calmed down now, but we could have been killed, 50mph on a main road and a wheel coming off could have meant that the car had swung out into oncoming traffic, we would have all been hurt or worse dead.
Tomorrow I am going to the garage where I had the work done and they have some explaining to do, I am going to have to get the repairs done and I think and I don't know about you that they need to pay for them.
My Mum seems to think they will pass blame and say it was my job to check it, so I have a plan, if they refuse to do the work and put right all the problems caused by what they did then they will lose business.
My plan is to stop anyone going into their garage for as long as it takes by telling everyone who turns up what happened, if this doesn't work I will be laying on the floor in front of the premises, i would like to see them try and move a 20 stone man with a bad attitude. I will make it my goal to put them out of business, or until they put right what they had done.
If you can't trust your garage then why do we motor?
I have learned a lesson today, I am not a mechanic but I will in future be making sure that when I have a wheel changed I will be checking to make sure that the nuts are tight. i have no faith in these places after this.
Love to you all
@artonmysleeve