Cars - and them round things.
Twice in my life the purchase of a motor vehicle has nearly brought about my rapid demise. Well the purchasing of a car by someone in the family commonly referred to as my father, who happens to be a skin flint.

Wavy lines to the mid 80's, we were poor and in need of transport, a trip to a local car auctions provided us with a beautiful example of a mini estate replete with mustard and rust spotted body work, mustard faux leather interior and that smell that only 20 years of damp, smoke and various oils can produce.

The car was poo, it had issues, but it was cheap and filled the requirements of moving forward. Upon getting it home from the auction the following week, my father got around to doing a service on the car. Taking one of the wheels off to check the brakes or whatnot, one quarter of a turn on the bolt caused the nut/bolt to come away, this then was repeated not only on the one wheel but both front wheels. The back faired far better. nuts were seized on to one wheel whilst the other was simply missing a nut/bolt!

Death trap!

This is one of those things, I am sure worse things happen. Much like what happened not 6 months ago.

The old man had picked up a new car, I wasn't best pleased as he had spent way too much and bought it in a car park with no reciept etc etc. The car was tidy and clean, but I had a strange feeling about it. Plus there was an odd noice coming from the one wheel. Not living at home meant that I didn't have a chance to fiddle nor even listen to it until I came over for a weekend visit. Randomly we popped to the petrol station to pump up the tyres, upon returning also coincidentally I had a look at this noisey tyre/wheel, and noticed the side wall of the tyre was bulging out. So set about swapping it.

Hub cap off, wrench thing on to loosen, kick, hmmmmmm the weight on the spanner undid the nut. Now I am no engineer, but I do presume that there should be some torque on a nut holding on the round bit that sits on the road? All 4 or 5 bolts hadn't been done up, the noice was the wheel vibrating, if it hadnt had been for the tyre wall (which was caused by a pothole) (and we got money back for a new wheel from the council) failure then it's quite possible in a few weeks the wheel would ahve flewn off. . . probably on the motorway!

Death!
(feedingtimeatthezoo day 1 of his bikini diet started, Wed 28 Apr 2010, 15:39, Reply)