Monday, June 10, 2013

Accident Analysis



Follow the line to Oggy's broken Body


I've joined a select group of people who have watched a tire pass them at 60 mph and the tire belongs on the vehicle they are driving.

In my case, the day was already a blazing and hellish adventure that had me pouring battery acid in my face to cool down. And this only a day after having another leaf spring component break that took ingenuity beyond belief to fix on a remote well head access road. Using a rock bar to leverage the leaf spring down to fit a bolt plate across. 5 hours in a dry sauna of 110 degrees wrenching on bolts. Awesome! Well, that lasted 1 day as the trailer's axle had been crying for attention and finally threw in the towel. And this is all only 1 day after burning out a $2200 explosion proof flare stack motor (unfortunately not idiot proof) The bearing froze, the spindle nut sheared off and the tire came off. "We lost a tire." I heard and thought he meant a flat tire because I could see smoke and shrapnel accumulating behind us in a cloud...then I saw a strange sight bouncing in the rear view mirror, a brilliant and free tire, finally released from the shackles of the axle. It bounced and bounced, traffic dodged it from the opposite direction and then the tire took a right turn off the shoulder and we three sweaty laborers, dog tired from unrelenting heat and work watched the tire bounce past us and I confess I was rooting for the tire to clear the fence separating the Zebra and Llama hunting ground because it seemed to want to make it. It was aiming for the fence.

Notice that the lug nuts are still on tight


The tire was really moving and it was either going to tear the fence down or else bounce over it. At the last second it hit a big bump and easily soared like Oggy's inflamed ego into the descending sunlight where the last hope of arriving home at a reasonable time collapsed and the Llamas scurried for cover beneath the Zebra's striped indifference.
Ah, it looks like the whole brake drum came off
We laughed and laughed as traffic bombed past us on their way to frack another farm to death, inches from crushing us.
The spindle nut either came off or the whole bearing seized due to lack of grease. The brakes are toast and now the whole axle shaft has to be replaced. Our laughter is the most dangerous part because when death and heat stroke are guaranteed risks every day then having a tire detach from the trailer at high speed becomes a joke. I still think it's funny.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is a hilarious post, thanks for the laugh

-Chicken Fucker

Oggy Bleacher said...

We all gonna burn up like weenies on a flamboyant grill covering Rush Limbaugh's flapping gullet. All I value will decay or be sold to auction whores. The children will inherit an abortion that requires virtual reality to enjoy and they will enjoy it with creamsicle dreamsicles and cycling monkeys on unicycle glaciers. Wolves are museum bound with my arthritic neck both destined for legendary status in the legends told over roasting computer monitor chips where former pianists melt logic boards to liberate gold and microchips for mad max barter economy.

Anonymous said...

Brad and I were on 280E in Mountain View driving the Monte Carlo to a friends birthday party when the right rear wheel came off. We are speeding at about 85 miles an hour. Brad says he saw the wheel pas us as we were fish tailing wildly. We pulled off the road without incident. The tow truck company I was working for at the time came and got us. WE borrowed a car and headed off to the party.
I repaired the wheel and lug bolts and went on to drive the Monte across country towing a trailer and then all over new england until I threw a rod through the hood.

Poncho

Oggy Bleacher said...

I picked the trailer up today ($1200 repair)...350 miles to the trailer shop...and 200 miles into the return trip I ran over a series of tire shreds...the tires caught the dangling harness cable and tore it out...but I didn't know until I stopped for lunch...brand new harness ruined...back to the shop 200 miles...then back to the trailer...200 miles....what's that? 1000 miles? And because I was driving when I hit the tire I basically got paid to pick the trailer up and ruin the harness and then used the money I got paid with to buy a new harness. I'm going to bed now.

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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.