  Gannon Member Username: Gannon Post Number: 10692 Registered: 12-2003 |
Wow. I'm still in shock from the events on my roadtrip this weekend. About a month ago, I had the rear wheel bearings finally replaced on the Audi, and part of the procedure is a four-wheel alignment. The handling was razor-sharp again, but turn-in was maybe a wee bit eager. I've never driven a car outside the Acura NSX and maybe a few race-prepped 911s that had anything I'd describe as UNDERsteer, but this car suddenly had it. A breath on the steering wheel and you were turning, sometimes not subtly. Undulations in pavement were suddenly something to be paid attention to, but not enough to rush back to my tuner's shop and complain. Although, I did mention it a few times over the phone with him. Regardless, I checked out the car for the trip through the UP to Minneapolis, and everything looked fine...you tend to look very closely at this mileage, I ticked over 258,000 on this drive. Crossing the Mackinac Bridge, I had to pass a slow-moving truck upon the metal grating middle lanes of the suspension portion...and the car felt really fishy. It settled the moment I got back on the paved lane, and the sights were too beautiful to worry about it. That, in retrospect, was the first real sign of trouble. The drive to Marquette was through heavy, heavy rain, too focused on keeping the car on the road to worry about handling...everything was survival and arrival. Paused overnight at my cousin's before heading to Minneapolis through Duluth, a drive I've done a half-dozen times...but never like this. Fog so thick the fourth lane divider dot was lost the entire drive...again, keeping me distracted from the car's misbehavior. Turned around in MN with another overnight and headed eagerly back to my cousin's outside Marquette...and hit another bank of fog, THEN heavy rain. This time, the car started feeling like it was on glare ice, but inconsistently...so I thought for a while it was the occasional road surface variations, how they drained the rainwater. Cement was the worst, actually, asphalt the best, might be something to do about surface tension! Oddly enough, with most any opposing traffic the car seemed to gravitate towards them...it was weird and amusing until the ONLY clump of traffic in the entire stretch of lonely road came along. Five cars all bunched up behind some slow driver, hit some checkered pavement and the car made a quick 20-30 degree skip and bolted straight towards the first car in the line! I do not know the mechanism that kept me from creating a six-car pileup in the middle of nowhere...for all I know I closed my eyes...but they passed safely, and I immediately found a side road to turn off and check my equipment. I felt the tires on each side, and felt metal cord on the inside edges...and NO tread at all on the tires! Luckily, I had packed my Dewalt snake-light, but what it illuminated wasn't very encouraging. I had been driving on slicks, and wearing quickly through each later of internal construction on these Toyo tires...on the inside corner of the tread! Easily ten thousand miles of treadwear ERASED by this bad alignment...but perfectly symmetrically, heh, so it was at least PRECISELY dissolving my contact with the road! Limped it back to my cousins, and had a great night visiting with everyone in her mystic bohemian troupe...it was truly enlightening, and a great contrast to the horrors that preceded. I'm going to make wall art of these tires, to at least remind myself how much work I am for my Guardian Angel. Cheers! | ||
Cambrian Member Username: Cambrian Post Number: 1724 Registered: 08-2006 |
Wow! Quite the story Gannon. Might I recommend a nice car rental place for your next extended road trip? Sometimes it just doesn't pay to take the risk on those older vehicles. I know my truck has been through a set of front wheel bearings and a set of trans bearings in the past few mos. I 've got a road trip planned with it this w/e to OH, but it's within my AAA road club range. | ||
Johnlodge Member Username: Johnlodge Post Number: 3018 Registered: 10-2003 |
Had the same issue once in my old Prelude. Only I knew what the problem was, as I had replaced the rack and pinion, as well as both CV joints myself, and was limping my way up for an alignment. Beat the hell out of paying someone to do all the work, but obviously without laser guided aligning equipment, you have to take it in. Well, of course the shop I trust was a bit of a drive from my house, and of course it was raining. From what I could tell, both of my tires were toed in a bit. The car wanted to go both ways at once, and one little dip in the road that favored one tire over another would send me zipping off to one side. I survived, though, and saved lots of money. | ||
Gannon Member Username: Gannon Post Number: 10693 Registered: 12-2003 |
Heh, AAA. Forgot about them. One year they cut me off with an old VW Scirocco, who knew they had a limit to how many times they'd willingly rescue you?! I always knew the precise towing distance boundaries, too, LOL. Nah, I'd much rather keep this thing roadworthy and have a familiar control set. My brakes and tires are usually better than any random rental...I'll take my chances on my maintenance, my mechanic is usually not anywhere close to this loose. Calibration was apparently off on the alignment rigging, but I suspect he had a disgruntled or unknowledgeable employee twiddling the wrong knobs on the thing. The wear characteristics were fierce, my unused donut spare rounded at the same angle in the three hundred or so miles from just across the Bridge...got my first flat 10 miles before it. Car fell off the jack and actually bounced off the top of the spare, giving me just enough room to reflexively yank my left hand off the top of it...before it came down again to rest right on top of the tire. I had not only just enough room to remove the jack, but to put it back up and quickly finish the job. Staring at my welted, but unbroken hand the whole time. It swelled for one day, without even any pain...just some minor binding between the first and second knuckles. The car bounced off the spare and then came to rest on it...upright. It was a very curious trip. Did I say I was still in a wee bit of shock over it?! Gotta figure how to make this wall art...get it out of my system. | ||
Digitalvision Member Username: Digitalvision Post Number: 413 Registered: 11-2003 |
Wow - what a story Gannon. I've seen similar things before - that is a pain. I'm with Cambrian. Hey, instead of wall-arting them yourself, you should think about donating the tires to Cass Community Social Services. Apparently, they're providing jobs for mentally challenged folks making mats out of car tires that were dumped in Detroit lots. I wonder if they'll take your tires :-) Heard about this on Detroit Today - link below to buy your own car-tire door mat. http://casscommunity.org/produ cts/mud_mat_small | ||
Ndavies Member Username: Ndavies Post Number: 2802 Registered: 10-2003 |
Actually Gannon you are describing oversteer not understeer. Oversteer is when the car wants to corner faster than the inputs are telling it to do. Oversteer can make a car very twitchy and can lead to spin outs. And usually if you wear thru to the treads you get a pretty good out of balance wabble from the tires before they go flat. In Understeer the car wants to go straight line and usually puts you in the outside ditch of a corner. For understeer think of turning at speed on black Ice. Oversteer is more like punching a rear wheel drive car in the middle of a corner. Also most performance cars today are set up with toe-in on the tires to generate a slight understeer condition. My mustang eats the inside 2 inches of it's front tires when aligned to factory specs. That's why you're supposed to rotate tires front to back on a regular basis. My mustang's now so old I only buy 2 tires at a time. New tires on the back, back tires on the front. | ||
Gannon Member Username: Gannon Post Number: 10695 Registered: 12-2003 |
Thanks, N, always get those confused, but shouldn't. Turn-in was extraordinarily responsive, it took great effort to not make mistakes with it...oddly similar in many ways to the NSX and those 911s, so I was digging some aspects of this newfound performance quirk. When I lived in LA, I had the work done by Beverly Hills Porsche/Audi...and they let me interview the techs before I chose one to do the alignments...that they charged something like $3-400 for!! I wonder now if I got over and understeer wrong then, too, heh! Either way, we settled upon the range of factory values towards the 'S4' specs...I had fun, fun, fun on Mulholland Drive three or four times a week on my way to and from the office...and ran the piss off of the Pacific Coast Highway once a month, whether it needed it or not. Now that the alignment is correct, I'm remembering how much joy this old German ride gives me, even a quarter million miles into our, um, relationship?! Heh...it is an odd love affair, but more than just a hunk of metal. Wish her sunroof worked for more than a vent, but those Euro headlights still shine up the night. Cheers! | ||
Toolbox Member Username: Toolbox Post Number: 1110 Registered: 10-2003 |
What kind of slacker you let work on that ride???? Chris at Wetmore's gets all my alignment buisness. | ||
Johnlodge Member Username: Johnlodge Post Number: 3030 Registered: 10-2003 |
I've got a really old picture of Wetmore's. You know there used to be an older car sticking out of the side of it. The car there now is an "update".  Someday they'll have to replace it with a 95 Taurus. | ||
Cambrian Member Username: Cambrian Post Number: 1725 Registered: 08-2006 |
Gone there for an alignment for my '69 ambassador when Bell Tire said they couldn't do it. No problems, however, took my Ford there for U joints and had an issue when the U joint when bad a year later. I found out the mechanic put two rear ones on instead of a front one and a rear one. DOH! Also wanted them to take a look at the carb and they said, "We don't do carbs here". | ||
Johnlodge Member Username: Johnlodge Post Number: 3031 Registered: 10-2003 |
Maybe they were on the Atkins diet. | ||
Gannon Member Username: Gannon Post Number: 10696 Registered: 12-2003 |
My tuner is Sam at Advanced Auto Sports on Grand River just past Ten Mile (between the BMW dealer and the Motel 6) in Farmington, until next week he's had to farm out the alignment business to a friend's shop. His old rig had given up the ghost, and they run something like $35k! I hold Sam and his crew in the highest esteem and they get all of my foreign car repair recommendations...although this time they also failed to re-attach the gas tank mounts after replacing the fuel filter. One from one of his in-house fellows, the other from his friend's shop...co-incidence, I'll keep telling myself. I got a few free things out of them for the problems, and got a chance to shake the hand of the fellow who blessed me with the leaky gasoline line! Plus, I swear I now have the best alignment this other guy has EVER done in his entire career! Cheers! | ||
Pam Member Username: Pam Post Number: 2829 Registered: 11-2005 |
Why didn't you buy a set of tires after you noticed the lack of tread? | ||
Gannon Member Username: Gannon Post Number: 10698 Registered: 12-2003 |
One doesn't always have an infinitely deep well of cash available when life's emergencies arrive. Plus, tires aren't tires...they are not interchangeable, even though most look the same. The chance of any tire store in the UP having what I needed for this vehicle were low, and the chances of them ripping off the troll so they could have another story to tell their friends was too great. I was prepared, if either of them lost air throughout Monday...when it was parked at my cousin's house while I lay catatonic in their guest house...I was going to buy a single pair of snow tires, the only wise purchase this time of year. But good question, Pam! | ||
Pam Member Username: Pam Post Number: 2830 Registered: 11-2005 |
quote: That's what credit cards are for. | ||
Gannon Member Username: Gannon Post Number: 10699 Registered: 12-2003 |
Yeah, I want to pay twenty percent more for substandard product that happens to be convenient for my current crisis...and keep me from having a spectacular experience trusting God. Plastic is great. I'd say we might've just defined the problem with North America, perhaps all of the 'free' debt-ridden corporate capitalist world. Buy crap you neither want nor truly need immediately when you get the urge to acquire it, using other people's money that you will have to pay a significant percentage of income towards merely the cost of this instantaneous convenience. I'll take the trust in God, I've never met my credit limit with Him! (or Her, or It) | ||
Pam Member Username: Pam Post Number: 2833 Registered: 11-2005 |
quote: Based on your story, I thought you did need tires immediately! quote: Well ok. I'm an agnostic though, so I believe in keeping my car safe even if I have to use the credit card. (And I pay it off every month anyway so interest rates don't bother me.) (Message edited by Pam on October 12, 2007) | ||
Gannon Member Username: Gannon Post Number: 10701 Registered: 12-2003 |
Oh yeah that's right, wisdom would've been to call a tow truck, pay whatever usury rate they'd charge to come out at midnight on a Sunday, then have them tell me that it would be illegal for them to let my car leave to anywhere competitive, due to the showing cords...nah, I fully understand, and understood, what I was putting myself up against. I know I pushed it, I call it bumping up against the edges of His Grace. You can call it stupid luck, or whatever! Both may indeed be valid, or neither, even. All in all, then, God saved me a TON of money. Which is odd, because I don't love it. Wait a minute...perhaps my stupid stubbornness saved me the stupid money that I didn't have to spend anyways, and He merely saved my life and my hand. That would make more sense, bein' that He cares about people more than money anyways, and has been training me that way all my life! I'm almost more comfortable with the 'God as Economist' rather than 'God the Life Saver', though. Might mean I'm still alive for a purpose. | ||
Pgn421 Member Username: Pgn421 Post Number: 170 Registered: 02-2005 |
Gannon- Glad to hear you are alive. I had a similiar experience. I was driving the semi,when i had a front blow out. The truck went from the Westbound lane of i-94, to the east bound. This was a while ago. It was by Southfield freeway. Scared the #••••••• out of me. | ||
Lilpup Member Username: Lilpup Post Number: 2926 Registered: 06-2004 |
standard rule for there-and-back long distance drives with minimal layover - rent, always rent rolling up mileage like that on an owned car, new or old, is not cost effective | ||
Gannon Member Username: Gannon Post Number: 10728 Registered: 12-2003 |
It is when you keep it for ten or more years...plus, having a familiar set of controls with well-maintained above-average brakes and tires, and even HEADLIGHTS makes for much safer and more enjoyable driving. These Toyo tires are so far above most anything rolling the road, that in dry or rain for two and a half seasons I'm more in touch with the road than most...but if you've never compared tires you wouldn't know it. Tires are NOT just tires, and anyone who buys the cheapest rubber for the ONLY four patches of contact with the road have no appreciation of basic physics. (I get there when pressed, but obviously can achieve the idiot status quickly, I know it was unsafe to drive on these tires after they were worn out) Last rental I had was from the Windsor airport for a drive up the 401 after working in Amherstberg. The wet performance of the tires was so poor I had to leave double the distance between me and the idiots in front of me in Toronto's rush hour, and the cheap foam seats made my back hurt for a week. (forgot how good those Audi seats are for a moment) I wouldn't just rent, that is the craps throwing of vehicle choices, and EVERYONE knows how everyone else treats rental cars (not me, of course, and not you either...I know, I know) | ||
Lilpup Member Username: Lilpup Post Number: 2930 Registered: 06-2004 |
"It is when you keep it for ten or more years" I mean rolling up the kind of mileage long distance, short timespan trips require. Renting is really the best option for short term, long distance trips when the other option is driving an old, high mileage car into the ground. Say it's 30 cents a mile to operate a car (low nowadays) which includes fuel, insurance, long term maintenance, etc. Now, I realize the fixed overhead of insurance doesn't go away when renting, but that long term maintenance bill can do ya in. So say you drive 600 miles in a weekend (e.g. roundtrip Chicago). That's $180 vs a weekend rental for $50-$60 with less worry about breakdowns and cumulative wear & tear, and there's no way the fixed costs of owning amount to the $120/weekend difference. Renting for such trips is worth it to extend the life of your owned car. |
