Driving danger for this time of year

[Kevin H]

I have a praise and a warning. Yesterday I had my winter tires changed to summer tires. Turns out that the mechanic did not tighten them as well as they should. I was driving home and heard a strange sound so I took my foot off the gas, put on my 4 way flashers and praise God was able to slow down and find a wide place to park my car as when I was reaching there my front driver's tire flew off, rolled down the median and back up the other side of the median and was rolling eastward in the westbound lane. Found it today in some bushes off the other end of the interstate. Fortunetly the angels kept the tire on until I was slow and coming to a stop.

Anyway, the police officer who stopped to help said that the same thing happened to him just last week, and that his car suffered much more damage than mine and he almost rolled over. Bringing the tire to the mechanic today he said that he's had a number of costomers who came in with the same problem in recent weeks.

So when you change or have changed your tired do a double check to make sure it is tight and then re-tighten them just before the car reaches 50 miles, and keep an eye open for tires coming into your driving path.

[Woody]

Wow. That's terrible. Praise God you are safe. That is frightening.

[Naomi]

Thankfully your guardian angel was working overtime yesterday! What a fright that must have been.

One would think the people at the tire shop would have responsible for the amount of damages to your vehicle.

It is good advice, thank you for sharing.

[Woody]

They often tell you to re-tighten the wheels after 100 miles or so. If he didn't follow their advice - they might not want to be responsible. I've never gone back and had them re-tightened. After hearing this story - I think I will.

[Kevin H]

Fortunetely it was not scary because the angels kept the tire on until I was nice and slow and off the road. I just heard a funny sound that I wanted to pull over to check. Had I been driving full speed and it came off, then it would have been scary

[Gordon1]

Do you mean wheel (with tire) Kevin?

Wheels nuts that are installed according to the book and torqued properly should not loosen. The cost of a torque wrench and socket (possibly deep socket or extension required) will allow one to verify if it's all up to specification. For my wheels, that's 100 foot-pounds.

I prefer to avoid the tire shops so I know the job is done right, skirting the air guns which can easily overtorque - no fun for flat tire changes.

[phkrause]

Wow Kevin, Praise the Lord that all is well. I remember a number of years ago. My parents came up to AUC for a visit and asked me to check out a noise that there car was making. So I took it for a ride and thought that it might be a u-joint. So I took it in to a guy everyone said was a really good mechanic and had him look at it, I told him my concerns and he said it was not the u-joint. So my parents, after the weekend visit, went back home to NYC. The following weekend we went down to visit my parents and my wife planned to stay the week, to take care of my dad because my mom was gonna be in the hospital for most of the week. So I figured I'd drive there car back to Mass and leave our car with my wife. Driving back up I could feel the drive shaft really vibrating, so I kinda slowed down a little. I got almost to the Conn-Mass border when I heard a really loud pop. I just took my foot off the gas and let the car roll to a stop, but I knew that the U-joint had just broke and that if I did come to a stop, it was also really late at night, that I'd be stuck there. For some reason I notice this access road that lead to another road that ran right next to the highway, so I steered the car in that direction. Than I also remembered that there was a chyrsler(sp) dealership not to far, so I got the car up onto that read and let in keep rolling until it came to a stop right in front of the place. And there was still someone there working. He said he couldn't believe that I'd made it there without flipping the car. Anyway not to my suppress it was the U-joint. Needless to say I never went to that mechanic again. Yes Kevin the Lord does take good care of us.

[Kevin H]

Thank you Pkrause for that story. The mechanic who did this is a neighbor and friend, he has a second job as a truck driver and had just gotten back from his other job and had changed tired on a couple of cars and thought that he had tightened everything and really feels bad about missing it and is paying for the repairs. However here is another miracle, the repairs ended up being less than $100.00!!! The mechanic who did them was shocked as to the small amount of damage, he said that he never saw so little damage after a wheel flys off!