Bloody Potholes.
What a week.
I got up on Monday, full of enthusiasm. I got in my car, I drove to work. Well, tried. I got past the half wooden road (it literally is half tarmac, half wooden slat - subsidence), keeping over to the left to miss schoolkiddies going for their bus. I forgot, unfortunatly, about the SOD OFF POTHOLE that sits there. I bounced through it, and thought “Sh*t, that was lucky..I’ve not broken anything.”
A little further on..I can hear odd noises. So I turned AC/DC off (It was louder than that!), and sure enough..”shhhhhh” from outside the car. Steering seems fine. WTF? I stop, I get out..and my passenger side front tyre is no more. Flat as you can get. My first ever “roadgoing” flat.
Balls. So, turn car round (no space in road to fix it)..limp slowly back to the flat, hearing the wheel grinding and clunking all the way. Everybody looking. Nice.
Got back to the car park, and realised I’d left my nice 2 ton trolley jack at mums when we moved. Shite. Oh well. Out with the 12v Impact wrench, and off with the wheel. Well, it should have been. “whirr…CLUNK, silence.” Yep, the damn impact jun jammed. Shite, Shite. Out with the old faithful wheel spider. Cue me, Mr “No Balance”, jumping up and down on the wheel spider until with a rack the nuts free off, and falling on his ass.
Up goes the car on the OEM Vauxhall “looks like a deathtrap” jack. Swap wheel for spare, grab camera, take pics. Go to work. Come home. Next day, go to work, come home fine. Wednesday, go to work, come home, drive to mums, drive back. Fine. Thursday - go to work fine, phone breakers yard, get a wheel and tyre off a Corsa/Astra for a tenner, chuck in boot, come home. Give way to an ambulance en route, and skid out of control. WTF?
Got back, check the tyre pressures. 28,28,28,15..no, 14..no 12..oh balls. Whip out the jack, jack up the back of the car. Yep, the back wheel is badly dented too, and the tyre has decided that it’s had enough. How it held on for several days up to 60mph, I don’t know at all. So, on goes my new Corsa wheel. It’s too thin..oh FFS…it’s a 4.5Jx13 rim..my Astra is a 5.5Jx13..but it is working. Heyho.
Today, we’ve been round tyre places who’ve all been packed out…and on Monday, I’ll go and get things sorted a bit bette while “normal” people are at work and it’s quiet. Right now, I have 4 normal and one “skinny” wheel, and a spare (thanks Jo!) with a dead tyre from the scrapper up the road. I’m going to swap the dead back wheel’s tyre onto the new “spare” rim.
The worst bit..? They’ve only filled the damn pothole in now!!! Too damn late guys, cheers…
Oh yes..pics…
I’d get a pic of the back wheel, but it’s dark. Much like the front one, but not so severe.
Remember that Montego I used to have with the metric wheels? 185×65r365 - wtf?