Once upon a time, I owned this front-wheel-drive foreign car. Ahh, I was young then. My boss's secretary was a real nice gal. It turned out that I was in the market for a car, and she was selling one. Let's call her Jenny.
Jenny told me that I needed to talk to her husband about it. Well, after work one day, he brings the car over and shows it to me. I like it. It has air conditioning, and it runs. Husband Steve tells me several non-consequential things about the car, and mentions something about a noise in the right rear. I take notice, but I really don't hear it when I drive.
So I bought this car. At the time, I lived about 4 blocks away from work, but driving was a lot safer than walking or biking simply because there was this huge freeway to go under. Well, I got in the car one morning on the way to work. It was uneventful. Maybe I heard something, but I don't really think I did. While still in the parking lot of my apartment complex, something unbelievably ridiculous happened to me. I had owned the car for less than a month.
This wasn't just any-old ridiculous event. This was hyperbolic, terrorist-level ridiculous.
And I was only going about 10 miles per hour when it happened. There were a few speed bumps in the parking lot, and I went over one or two.
Then, as I approached the exit to the apartment complex, I heard a loud THUD and a scraping sound on the right rear. Milliseconds later, I saw out of the corner of my right eye a dark object passing me and careening past my car. I screeched to a halt. I watched as the right rear wheel of my car, newly released from a frozen bearing, pass me at around 10 mph. It continued to roll to the parking lot exit, cross the street that I was going to turn onto, jump the far curb, and come to a stop at a vacant lot across the street, where it fell down. It was like a cartoon in real life.
Needless to say, I was a bit late to work that day.
Of course I had to call my boss ... whose phone was answered by Jenny ... to let her know that my car was disabled 4 blocks away and I was going to have to get a wrecker to move my 3-wheeled car into a parking space. All that was left on the ground was a nub (axle) and the inner part of a needle bearing. The hub and everything else had come off.
My coworker's husband Steve came to my rescue an hour or so later. He was very apologetic. He knew he should have looked at that wheel bearing. It had frozen so tight that "we" now needed a whole axle assembly from a junkyard in addition to the bearing, the wheel, brake lines, and other parts. Steve and I worked the following weekend or three, as he shuttled me around to part stores and junk yards to get everything. He was such a nice guy. He paid for essentially all of the repair parts, and did most of the labor, too. He felt 100% responsible for it.
I had never really worked on cars much before this mess. I guess I learned to pay attention to those little noises that might mean something. And I learned how to pack a bearing with grease! Oh, and I just realized that our Chevys ask for repacking the front bearings every 15,000 miles. I'm pretty sure mine has missed about 15 of those from the looks of the other things I see in this new-to-me rust bucket.
Be safe out there!
