This morning I got the brake situation fixed. The caliper was frozen to the pin on which it is supposed to slide in and out. A little WD-40 combined with a bit of wrenching and prodigious amounts of persuasion with a 4lb hammer, and everything is slicker'n snot. The job was done by 10:30 am, there is no more smoke, and I am a thankful man. My mechanical projects don't usually resolve themselves quite so easily.
All this reminds me of another automotive incident back more than forty years ago when Linda and I lived in Alma. Her grandmother had given us her 1965 powder blue Ford Falcon. It was a beauty, but needed some brake work prior to having it inspected. I had just changed the brakes on the front, so when I took it to the garage for inspection, I asked if they would check the rear brakes instead. They said they would. It passed and I drove it home. Later in the day, Mrs. Radspinner, whose children attended our youth group asked if I could take her into town for some errands. The Radspinner kids were a rough and tumble bunch, much like the Herdman clan in the story "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever." Lets just say they were not known for their genteel ways. Actually, I think the author of that story must have known the Radspinners and modeled the Herdmans after them, changing the names to protect the guilty. They lived at the top of Alma Hill, the highest point in Allegany County. From the Alma end, the road to their house winding up the steepest part of the hill, broke to the right for a quarter mile before meandering to the left just beyond their house. On the far side, it descended gradually until it connected with the main road into Wellsville just south of the village.
I drove up the hill, picked up Mrs. Radspinner and a couple of her unruly brood, and headed to town. But something wasn't right. The car bucked and swayed like a drunk on a binge. I drove for a few miles before stopping to check everything I could see, pushing on the side of the car to see if I could discern anything loose. Nothing. But it kept getting worse till I told Mrs. Radspinner we had to turn around. We got safely back to her house and I dropped them off. As I drove away, I looked in the rearview mirror.
Mrs. Radspinner was standing in the road, wide-eyed, with her hands covering her mouth as if she were about to go into shock. "That's odd," I said to myself as I bore out of sight to the left and started down the steepest part of the hill. When I say steep, I mean STEEP! You almost needed four wheel drive in the summertime to navigate Alma Hill. I had gone perhaps a quarter mile down the hill when there was a huge BANG as the rear end slammed against the road and I watched my left rear wheel and tire go bounding past the car, down the hill, and into the woods. It took me quite awhile to find it and mount it back on the lugs, using one lug nut from each of the other three wheels to secure it and get me home.
The garage never would admit that they hadn't tightened the lug nuts, insisting that they had checked the front brakes as per the norm. They were lying, of course, but I couldn't prove it, and it didn't really cost me anything. A mechanic friend gave me some old lug nuts to replace the four that had disappeared somewhere on the hill, and spare wheels were full-sized back then, so served as my regular rim and tire since the old one's stud holes were reamed out from the action of the wheel chucking back and forth on the studs before it finally cut loose and danced down the hill.
Automobile suspensions and I have a rather tenuous relationship. As long as they do their job, we are all happy. When they become restive or defiant, things get ugly. And although I like to think I'm smarter than a brake drum, the parts usually win. But not today. Linda's Toyota is humming along, and we are happy and thankful.
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