A van fixed, and luckily we never crashed

Got up this morning with one thing in mind, taking the van to a friend's shop in Urbana, Missouri called ** "Righteous Motorworks". The van had almost always (it seems anyway) pulled to the right when the brakes were applied. When I talked to Alan he thought that it might just be that the front brake pads needed changed. Then about a month ago (maybe more) we started hearing rumbling in the back of the van when we drove anywhere. Asked one friend who also knows how to work on autos and he suggested that the rear crankcase might be low on fluid. I had mentioned the rumbling to Alan a month ago and he thought it possible that some dust or sand got into the brake drums. Well, today we went to his shop around noon for him to look at the front brakes. We had bought some pads for them a few weeks ago when he suggested that might be our pulling problem, and figured if that's what was needed we would have the parts. As it turned out, the pads were fine and didn't need replaced. But even before he really saw the pads, he wiggled the driver's front wheel, and it wiggled A LOT. He took the tire off and immediately saw the problem... A REALLY BAD TIE-ROD. And I do mean BAD :-( So bad that we're lucky that we didn't hit a bump/curb/or anything just right and have the wheel just do a free-turn when the tie-rod came loose. In other words, it was an EMERGENCY and CRITICAL that it be replaced immediately! Of course he looked at the passenger side front as well, and although it wasn't as bad, it needed to be replaced as well. He replaced them both for us. He said that the tie-rods were SO warn, that they've probably been worn for a long, long time. We had the van aligned a few years ago and they (a different mechanic) didn't mention that anything was loose, but Alan thinks they probably were at least some loose even then. We also had the front tires replaced last month, and THEY didn't mention anything either. The rods were bad enough that they SHOULD have noticed. *sigh* He said he had never seen tie-rods in such bad shape and the people still driving the vehicle! Then I took him for a test drive so he could hear what we heard rumbling in the back-end. It WASN'T low on crankcase oil (at least not low enough to cause a rumbling noise), it was much worse. I thought something might be wrong with the driver's side rear wheel when I was climbing under there looking for the bolts and nuts that'd have to be taken out in order to take the back seat out, when I noticed the inside of the tire was oily. Anyway, what he found was that the rear bearings and seal had gone bad and started leaking oil that got on the tire. He had me start the van and put it in gear to make the rear wheels spin, then asked me to put the breaks on. When I did, the passenger side stopped, but the driver's wheel just kept spinning! The brake pads on the driver's side had so much oil on them that the brakes didn't work on that wheel. So he took the rear axle out to get a better look at the bearings and noticed that they had caused a pretty significant groove on the axle, which has been known to cause the wheel to just fall off if something (like a pothole or curb) was hit too hard. YIKES AGAIN! He called the part store to see if they had the bearings, which luckily they did. Alan said that was lucky, because they usually have one of the parts needed for a vehicle, but since it's a small town part store, usually don't have any more, but today they had EVERY part (bearings, crankcase gasket, 2 tie-rods) that we needed. Thank goodness!! He of course fixed that too. Then he even helped me loosen the nuts on the bolts that were holding the back seat down/in-place. On our way out he reminded us that a front-end alignment NEEDS to be done ASAP. Good thing we have a little extra put aside (or did have) so that we got today's fixes done and also have the money for an alignment. Tomorrow (or before we go somewhere. Tomorrow's supposed to be colder than today) we can remove it and increase our hauling capacity to that of a pickup, or close to it. That's where we spent all afternoon. On the way home we stopped and got a few things at the grocery store, and now we're home (have been for a couple of hours). Plus our new and best mechanic has won a lifetime supply of my wife's famous (among our friends anyway) brownies!!

** Righteous Motorworks
65 Hwy & D
Urbana, MO 65767

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