Back in the mid 70's (I just turned 62), I had a job working at a thing called a full service gas station.
Now believe it or not, I would come to your car, you would roll down your window of your car, and I would ask you "How can I help you?"
This would start a brief dialog where 85% of the time all the response would be is to let me know how much gas you needed. Then I would actually put the gas in your car, collect the money from you, you start your car, and off you'd go.
The other 15% would entail trying to fix a problem your car was having. Some times the problem was an easy fix like a belt that needed tightening or replacing, fixing or replacing a tire, or maybe repairing a leaky radiator hose.
This one day, this lady came to the station complaining about a noise when she hit a bump in the road. She could feel the noise in her steering wheel.
I didn't know what the problem could be, so I had her drive into the 2 bay garage. Each bay had a hydraulic lift that would allow me to stand upright while looking at her car's undercarriage.
I went to the front of her car and had a look see. (This is with the car suspedended in mid air)
I shook her tire and noticed a huge problem right away. This tire moved a good 1/2 an inch side to side. It should have been rock solid.
I examined further and discovered where in a couple of places, cotter keys had been removed (these cotter keys assured that the nut would not move, at all) and two vital parts of her front end linkage had been dramatically backed off.
This didn't happen in normal wear and tear. Some one had done this on purpose.
I showed her the problem, and told her, "If I had to guess, I would say some one is trying to kill you."
Wait, what?
Yep. Very serious stuff was going on with her car and it was purposefully done by some one that was not right in the head. She, in a matter of time, maybe weeks, maybe months, would have lost any control of her steering at all.
It coming apart doing 25 MPH, eh, not so bad. It coming apart on the freeway at 65 or 70 MPH, a much different matter, especially her going into oncoming traffic.
She started to cry and was visibly shaking. I had her sit down in the office while I tightened everything back up and replaced the cotter keys.
