Yes, the blog is still broken. I’m still working on it. So none of you are going to get this by email. My apologies! I may just make the jump to Feedburner…
Anyways; on Monday we had a huge snowstorm. Being the Young Savage that I am, I drove to work. Two lanes of the four on I-95 were completely whited, and the two that remained were very narrow black strips. No salt, no plows.
The Subaru did famously; deftly picking it’s way through foot-high ruts and rounding corners like a champ. At one point, I was driving in the right hand lane and a Saturn passes me while we go around a wide curve. Suddenly, the Saturn looses traction, slips out of it’s lane, spins across all four lanes, narrowly misses the guardrail on the opposite side, guns his engine, zips across all four lanes of traffic AGAIN, and comes to a skidding stop in front of me. I slammed on my brakes (thank God for ABS) and came to a stop about a foot away from him.
He guy wipes his window, waves, does a K turn, and drives off.
The rest of the ride was uneventful. Then I get off on my exit, and I hit the curb.
I didn’t see it coming; the edge of the offramp was hidden by pounds of fluffy white snow, and I smacked my right front wheel into the 6 inch high concrete edge.
I kept going, and arrived at work, but noticed a slight wobble in the steering.
Having owned a Passat and a Saturn that were plagued with alignment, ball joint and rim problems, I knew this was not good.
I drove home. The wobble was worse. I couldn’t go above 50mph without it shaking all over the road.
The next day, we pile into the car to drive me to work. And the car won’t shift into Drive. Even after warming the thing up for close to half an hour, the Subaru only will go in reverse. Finally, after adding transmission fluid and straining on the shifter; I popped it into Drive. Gears 3, 2 & 1 were still locked up.
And the wobble got worse. At 35-40mph, the steering wheel shook violently. And in addition to all that, I could feel the transmissions thumping ever so slightly.
I called work and told them I was going to take the day off.
Tamika and I remembered that at church last Sunday, someone had pointed out that one of the guys, Tom Walker, was a mechanic. Just out of the blue. Just, “Hey, that’s Tom. He’s a mechanic”. So I pulled open the church directory Trish Barrett had given me and called him.
He was in the hospital, his wife had just come out of surgery. He said his “garage” was on wheels, and that he could come by on Thursday morning.
Tamika and I prayed for the car, and for Tom’s wife.
On Wednesday, I had to get to work, so we drove the car. The wobble was still there, but less. The problem with shifting was gone.
By Wednesday night, the wobble was completely gone. And the car was still shifting normally. We decided to still have Tom check it, just in case.
This morning, Tom came by. And the car is absolutely fine. When I hit the curb, snow and ice got lodged in the wheel, and threw off the balance. Also, the bottom of the car was coated with ice, including the transmission. So, when the weather got warmer, all our problems just melted away.
Praise God.