Ray: You should pray that this thing catches fire, Phil.
I know you’re afraid to take it to a bona fide mechanic, because you know the news is going to be awful. But if you want to keep this truck, that’s what you really need to do. You have to find out if this is still a viable, roadworthy vehicle. And I think we both know what the answer’s going to be.
At the very least, you need to make sure the brakes are not about to fail, the wheels aren’t about to fall off, the frame isn’t held together by dust and the engine isn’t about to do its impersonation of the Burning Man finale.
Seriously, it’s not just that the truck could disintegrate around you if you hit something, leaving your face as the bumper. You also could be - and probably are - a danger to all the other drivers on the road, because if your brakes fail or a wheel falls off, you could take other people with you.
So my suggestion is that you thank this truck for its many years of service, say a Hail Mary over it, and drop it off at the junkyard. And instead, buy a used trailer. You say you have another vehicle; if it’s got any kind of decent towing capacity at all, you can put a trailer hitch on it, buy an old trailer and use it to haul your wood, coal and mulch. Or rent or borrow a truck for the times you actually need to haul stuff.
But this truck sounds like a danger to you and others. Rather than haul mulch, I think it’s ready to become mulch.
Of course, I know you’re going to ignore my advice, Phil. I’ve known determined cheapskates like you - Exhibit A was my late brother. So when you do ignore my advice, at least wear sneakers when you drive so that when it catches fire, you can run.
You have plenty of things to worry about - tire wear shouldn’t be one of them
Dear Car Talk:
I park in a parking garage for work, and I have a question about tire wear. I usually park on level 4 or 5, and the only turns that are made are right-handed (clockwise), for both entering and exiting. My question is: Will one side of my tires wear more quickly than the other? Thanks! - Rodney
Ray: Rodney, it's really tempting to tell you that every other day you have to drive backward up and down the ramps just to keep your tire wear even. But the truth is, you don't have to worry about it.
If you were spending all day driving up and down those ramps, then yes, you might wear out the tires on the left side of your car faster than the tires on the right.
But the amount of wear your tires get from going up and down those ramps once a day is tiny compared to the wear they get driving around the rest of the time. So you don’t need to do anything.
If it’ll make you sleep better at night, one thing you can do is simply rotate your tires on a regular basis to even out the wear.
For instance, when you get your oil changed every 7,500 miles or so, you can have your mechanic swap the tires around.
I think you’ll find that a lot easier than backing up four or five stories of ramps on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Just don’t ask your mechanic if making all those right turns on ramps is wearing out your left springs faster than your right springs. They’re a lot more expensive to rotate than tires.
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