A Loose Car Tire.

Cowland July 25th, 2007

I’ve had a like/hate relationship with my car since I bought it back in 2001. I think it was manufactured on a Friday afternoon and then fell off its moorings on the boat over to Canada on the Sunday morning. When I took possession of the car, the trim on the left was all scratched and also lights kept blowing out on that side.

I’ve had issue after issue with it…they’ve been mostly minor mechanical and cosmetic problems, but nevertheless a pain in the ass to resolve. Some issues were not mechanical at all–like running into a horse, multiple flat tires, and sliding off the side of the driveway in the winter. And yet the car has kept me safe in extremely unsafe conditions, such as the recent complete white-out we had in Workland last Winter, or the patch of black ice that I hit on the highway a couple of Winters ago.

It was about two months ago that I forked out a ton of money to change both inner ball joints, the back springs, and the brakes. There is still a belt tightener and a mirror that needs to be fixed, along with a dent that someone left me in a parking lot on my back left fender.

It was the ball joints that I thought were the problem yesterday as I was driving home. As I approached the halfway mark on my journey, a strange grinding oscillation started up within the car. I pulled over and checked the tires for flats, but everything seemed ok. As I got closer and closer to the house, the problem worsened.

WTF, I’m thinking as I pull up to our driveway. Did the mechanic forget a screw or something? Out I get to check on things again, but everything again seemed solid.

That’s when I decided to try the bolts holding my left front tire on. One was loose enough for me to tighten it by hand. Using a tire wrench, I discovered that every single one of the five bolts was loose. I could also see where the tire had been wearing elliptically.

Tightening the bolts solved my problem, but I wonder how close I was to actually losing the tire while I was driving. I wonder why they were loose in the first place. And I wonder what will be next with this car.


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  • Dr. Mommy, D.D.S.

    beamers, and german cars in general, are awesome and last a long time but are super expensive to fix. my friend had a similar problem with her volkswagen – lots of little things went haywire but the car was still totally drivable. she spent so much money fixing her dashboard display, air conditioning, some sort of circuit breaker, and little bits and pieces from the interior.

    you haven’t pissed anyone off lately, have you? one bitch assistant i worked with back in new york keyed ned flanders in the parking lot.

  • Ameloblast

    Actually The Girl just asked if maybe our crazy neighbour could have had something to do with it.

    It’s very possible because Blair ran into her on the street at the pig roast and she ended up warning him to be careful about us…

    Although the car has been parked on the road for the last month, it’s unlikely that she had anything to do with the tire. That’s because one of the bolts needs a special key to unscrew it and that was just as loose as the others. Also if she had loosened anything, I would probably have noticed a problem pulling away from the house rather than on the way home.

    Who knows for sure though.

  • mrs miles away

    bmw is a safe, reliable and trustworthy make of car. sometimes tho, as with many things in life, you may end up with one exemplar which is not quite up to par. i think you’re still in a pretty good, solid car despite all your problems. i do hope no human did this to you purposefully, that’d mean they are nuts and need to be put away. as far as your crazy neighbour, she is THAT crazy, i agree, but i doubt she’s THAT smart or resoursefull…..but i don’t know her. in any case, you were lucky nothing happened on the road. someone was watching out for you. thank your angels.

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