Tie-Rods are Important??
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been riding my bike around Holland & having an all a’round good time with it. Every once in awhile I have to hop in my car to make a client meeting or to pick someone up, but overall the mini-van just sits under the carport.
Today, however, was one of those days I had to take the car out of the carport. I’d already ridden my bike to and from work but I had to pick up some people later for a business dinner. We have some guys from our corporate office and while they’re in town working on projects with us we take them out for good food.
I picked them up outside the Hampton hotel and then swung over to the south side to pick up my boss. Not more than a few blocks away was Margarita’s Restaurant which is one of the Sentinel’s favorite places to eat.
The drive was fine and as always the food was amazing. We all ate more than we ever should have and drank enough to submerge a small country. After all that we drove around H-Town and showed the guys how the Dutch live.
Throughout this whole adventure of driving up and down streets, slowing down and speeding up - my car was amazingly fine.
After the night was over I dropped them back off at the Hampton and came home. Not more than 30 minutes past, my buddy, Ben Doornbos gives me a call to go skating. We were going to meet at the skate park and have a good hour of roll in the ramps.
I grabbed my keys, skates, and cell phone and ran out the door. My car was still cooling off when I started the engine back up for the small trip across town.
No more than 2 feet outside the driveway do I get when I hear a loud POP!!! from under my hood. My car just stops. I can’t go in reverse and my wheels won’t turn either left or right.
At this time I’m pretty much blocking traffic to anyone trying to drive by and people are confused as to why I can’t back my car up 2 feet to get out of their way.
One of the people passing by was my old neighbor’s friend. My neighbor left a good couple weeks ago into a nicer house but her buddy still lives in the area. He came up asked if I needed any help and after I nodded somewhat embarrassingly he slid under the car to see what the problem was.
No more than a minute later he finds the problem and say, “You’re tie rod is snapped”. This obviously meant next to nothing to me so he explained the basic mechanics of what it does and its importance. He also pointed out that my 2 front tires were pointing in opposite directions. This was another clue that this was a tie rod issue and overall driving problem.
At this point all I could do was have some buddies come over and help me push the mini-van back under the carport. This wasn’t that bad other than not being able to use the steering wheel to move the tires. We had to move each tire individually with our hands, which made the whole adventure a bit longer.
So now I have no car and odds are it’s going to cost me close to $250.00 (rought estimate) to get it fixed. This isn’t a huge chunk of change unless you just bought a house and are getting ready to spend a lot of money to replace the roof on it. At that point those extra costs really kick a guy when he’s down.
Update Later:
Does anyone know someone that might be able to stop by my house to fix my car. I’ll pay them what their worth and offer them free beverages for their trouble.
