|
Well, I have to say, car problems suck. Last week i was driving when i started to notice a vibration in the passenger rear. Since i was leaving for Texas the next day, i left it be. On Thursday this week, i took my car over to a friends house to see what it was. It turns out the tire had a huge bubble in the tread and the belts were visible on the outer edges of the tire. There was also a few bubbles on the inner sidewall of the tire. The truth be told, i'm lucky the tire hadn't blown already. Also, before i removed the tire, i noticed one of the lugnuts was missing. Once i got the wheel off, i saw the the stud was broken! Please remember i only bought this thing a few months ago, and there was a cover over it, so this was a nice little surprise. So the story goes, i took the tire over to discount and when i showed him the tire, the first thing he said was, "lets get the air out of this thing before it blows in the showroom." LOL. of course with only 3 studs left, i knew it would be a better idea to put the wheel on myelf just in case. I know that at those tire shops, the way over toque the studs, and if they broke another, then i was in real trouble. So i'm in my apartments parking lot baking in 100+ plus heat, in the sun, changing my wheel. sure enough, while taking my spare off, another stud snaps. but it's snaps farther up, there is still hope i can get a nut on there after i clean it up. After an hour of filing and test fiting the nut, success, i can get enough threads that it wont be too horrible dangerous. but because the stud snap inside the nut, the nut is useless. In the end, i have to "barrow" a nut off of another wheel, so i'm down to 2 wheels with 3 nuts on them. Now i need to drive to the autoparts store, buy the repalcement parts and then drive arcoss town to my dads to hopefully fix it. It's risky, but i'll take the chance, i have no other chioce. Wish me luck. |
Huh? That sounds like a BIG problem David. Makes me wonder if the other studs will suffer the same fate. Likely too late because you're already gone, but just drive slow and if you can, replace at least the 4 studs on that wheel (actually both remaining). Let us know. | ||
heh, good luck and like GH says drive slow! | ||
That's very unsafe Banta. Most people neglect their tires, even though it is the only part of your car touching the ground. All of our family's cars (that don't have free factory service deals) have lifetime alignment packages with the local Firestone. $120 bucks means I can roll in 7/365 and have them check the alignment, tire pressure, wear, and balance and not pay a penny. Of course, I don't really do that, but at every oil change, I have them do an alignment. Especially since I work in west LA, where potholes the size of Shrek swallow Hummers on a daily basis. I'm constantly amazed at how fast alignment on my P5 gets out of whack. (doesn't help that I'm FWD) Over the course of thousands of miles, your tires will develop very bad wear patterns if they are the slightest out of alignment. You should never get to the point where you start feeling vibration and have big bulges/bubbles in your tires. That thing should have been red flagged 5000 miles ago. I'm always amazed at people on the side of the freeway, with their entire sidewall blown out, flapping in the wind like a windsock. It's not easy to blow out a tire like that even if you tried on purpose. Tire rack is super cheap these days, I picked up a real nice set of summer Kumhos Ecsta SPTs for the P5 like $60 each (apparently the autox-ers love them), and they handle way better than the crappy OEM all season Dunlops Mazda had. Don't compromise your driving experience to save a couple bucks. It's your life we're talking about. Next time you do an emergency lane change to avoid that piece of wood on the freeway, you're going to wish you had a nice set of sticky shoes on your car. | ||
Heres the follow up. I ent to one checker store, and bought 2 studs and the only lug they had that would fit. BUT, i had a fairly long chat with him about it and he found the only store in the whole metro area that sold the studs in a 10 pack for half the price! They also had a 10 pack of the lugs i needed. The store wasn't too far out of the way either. I drove slow (for me) and when i got to the store, i checked everything out. I picked the stuff up, the guy at the other store had ask them to hold them for me. I then drove over to my dads house, and everything was still ok. The frist problem was the drum housing was a pain to get off, we ended up using a puller to get it off. Getting the studes out was easy, getting the new one in was hard. But after slaving in the 105+ heat for over an hour, we final found a method that worked great. It's all fixed now. we did repalce all of them in that hub of course. Had this been my car originally, this would of never happened, or atleast not to this degree. At this point, i have only replaced the bad tire, but i do plan on buying a full set of wheels and tires in the near future. This wheel and new tire will become my spare :) Not only did we fix that problem, but we also did another project, building a table for a slotcar track to put in our apartment. We almost fiished that, but by 1:30 am, we decided to call it quits. After all, it was way past my dads bed time. :P | ||
Way to go DB. I love doing stuff like that with my dad. Go karts, restoring rifles, building sim cockpits, etc. :) |