wri t es Simon says
by Simon Hastelow
Three wheels on my wagon
For the third time in my vehicle driving life I have had a serious issue with wheels and tyres. None of which were my fault, but all serve as a reminder that you shouldn’t just trust someone else has done their job.
First one was following an MOT. I had a cracked side-wall so the garage swapped over my spare tyre to get the ‘PASS’. Obviously this was back in the days when they’d do things like that for you rather than the current ‘computer-says-no’ experience we have to deal with. Anyway, driving home I felt like I’d hit a pot-hole in the road, but was then overtaken by a wheel. The nuts hadn’t been tightened up correctly and I lost it. A post office van some distance up the road acted as an involuntary fielder and stopped it for me. I jacked up the vehicle (Defender 110), put the wheel back on using some spare wheel nuts I had and carried on home. Other than a slight flat spot on my brake disk there was no other damage. Some years later, and on another Defender 110, I had the suspension upgraded. Full kit, springs, shocks, braided brake hoses, new bushes, the works. The company also fitted wheel spacers. However, the guy fitting them only torqued the wheelnuts, not the nuts holding the spacers!
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THE MUD LIFE MAGAZINE
Cue my second experience of losing a bloody wheel while driving along! I know some of you will say that “You must have heard something, or felt something was wrong!”, but I didn’t, both instances were sudden and about as dramatic as you can get. Once I got that wheel back on and got to a safe spot I removed all four wheels - one other wheel had loose nuts and binned the spacers. I have never used spacers since. Which brings me to my most recent escapade, with our family bus. As the MOT was getting closer, and last year there was an advisory notice about excessive play in the steering, I decided to get it fixed pre-MOT. Two tyres were also nearing the end of their useful life, and another had a slow leak so I asked the garage to fit four new tyres. When I picked it up they told me there was no point changing one of them as it still had good tread. I paid the bill and toddled off to book the service and MOT at a different garage.
