The Tale of the Tail Shaft

Well, firstly the issue of health. The kids are back at school, which is cause for celebration. Amy is still of course distance ed’ing it. I think she is still trying to work herself into a routine. Anita is getting over her sinusitis. ME, well, this week I am aback to the Neurologist to see what the changes in my MRI means. Ten years since the last one and now change that is “abnormal to a person of my age”. So it may be nothing, mean nothing, or could be early changes for dementia. That would explain a lot. Thursday fortnight (14^th Aug 08) I will go to the surgeon and see what he has to say about my little 2.8cm gall stone.

The Tale of the Tail Shaft. Last Thursday Amy and I went to a funeral in Geelong to support a friend of ours, Cathy, whose brother in law Ronnie had passed away at age 46 from cancer, leaving behind a wife and three young kids. On our way home, with Amy in the drivers’ seat, and ‘L’ plates appropriately displayed, the car began to shudder. At first I thought the car was just afraid of Amy’s driving. After all she has hurt it a couple of times already. Anyway, I asked Amy if she could feel the vibration. She could, and said it was more like it was coming through the seat. I didn’t think she was that scared of her own driving.

I asked her to pull over, and in a nice safe area off the freeway, I inspected the vehicle. Tyres intact? Check. Wheels not loose? Check. Nothing stuck under the car or in the tyre grooves? Check. It seemed safe to continue on our journey home. This is the same day the Westgate Freeway was closed to Melbourne bound traffic because of a phosphoric acid spill. Traffic in the western suburbs was reportedly chaos. As we approached the Western Ring Road I asked to get into the left hand lane ready to take the Western Ring, and I saw all the traffic ahead hitting the brake lights. Whoa that was a lot of red. Needless to say we took the Western Ring Road. Traffic there was heavy and slow. Can’t imagine why. Once we passed Furlong road things started to speed up. Back came the shudder. They weren’t good vibrations we were feeling.

I have the mechanic on speed dial on my mobile phone. (for work) So I rang and booked the car in for a Checkup with Dr Kinraid for the following day. Fortunately the rest of the trip home was uneventful, except for continued vibrations and the usual peak hour traffic on the Monash Car park, er sorry, Freeway. Anita dropped the car off to Lardner Mechanical and Dr Kinraid the following morning, and before lunch I got the phone call. “Hi Glenn its Graeme”. “Gidday Graeme, how are you?” “Yeah um, good. Ahh, listen, about your car!” “Yeah” I said with just a hint of hesitation. “Well there’s good news and there’s some bad news”. Don’t you love it when someone says that to you and you know it’s going to cost you money, big time. “One of the universal joints has gone in the tail shaft. The bad news is that it’s not a replaceable part. I think the way to go is to get another tail shaft, and cut and shut new ends on, then take it to a specialist and get him to balance the tail shaft.” “Any idea what that’s going to set us back Graeme”? I asked. “Well it’s hard to get a cost on these things, but it’s probably going to be around four or five hundred just to get the tail shaft”.

Now I’ve known Graeme a long time, and I trust him. So I gave him the go ahead. Also the car has been stalling as you go through intersection and roundabouts. Not a good thing. And it’s an automatic, so can’t say it’s the driver. So I thought we might as well get Dr Kinraid to fix that while he has it. What the hell, while you have it, it needs a service too.

What I like about Graeme is that he almost gives you the worst case scenario and cost, and works back from there. I got a phone call later on Friday afternoon from Graeme saying that he had managed to get a tail shaft that dropped right in. That’s gotta be cheaper. So now we just have to wait and see how to other little problem comes up. I’ll try to let you know what the damage was, if I can still afford the Internet!