Wheel alignment and wobbly

"As far as "stupid" - I don't know about the rest of you, but I was born stupid. "

Apparently you don't know the difference between being stupid and being ignorant. In this guys case, the whole thing has been explained to him several times and he's not an infant. If he still doesn't get it, in my book he is either stupid or a troll.

Reply to
trader4
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Everything you say is true, but educating someone who hasn't a clue is more than difficult, it's almost impossible.

Think about what he asks: "can you tell if something is breaking down or about to fall off simply by looking at it?". Does that not fly in the face of the simplest, most basic logic?

Canoli

Reply to
canoli

Granted. My contention is that while there are some die-hard gearheads in this forum, who have black diesel oil running in their veins, and who appreciate the art of engineering in the Benzes, there are those who bought a Benz for other reasons, and who may be just a bit clueless about things mechanical. And, again, it is a tribute to current engineering that it is actually possible to treat a car as an appliance these days.

Look at it this way. Computers are sold as appliances these days, "Just stick the key in and go". Yet they are complex devices, with many many hundreds of software components. I've been in the computer business for over 25 years, which in terms of hardware and software evolution far outstrips the evolution of the automotive industry in the last 75 years.

There is one company which has consistently released some of the poorest, least reliable, most security-oblivious software I have ever seen. In excess of 99% of all viruses I have ever seen victimize this company's software. This company has been accused and convicted of sleazy business practices in multiple courts on multiple occasions. Yet most of the readers of this forum are still running some version of Microsoft Windows.

Again, this is because of the "appliance mentality" that this is even possible - but let me ask you; do you know how to restart your print spooler? Do you know why DCOM and RPC are just stunningly bad ideas when run on a machine connected to the Internet? Or do you just blindly drive around the Internet with your front wheels wobbling?

To my mind, and in my experience, this defies all "logic", simple, basic or otherwise. But I have to realize that this is not genetic knowledge, like breathing and suckling.

All I'm saying is that Ben may be mechanically clueless, but he, and anyone else reading this forum, may be better seduced into the rewards of properly caring for and maintaining his Benz by a little courtesy than by name-calling. And if he's a troll, a polite answer will drive him out of the group faster than any other strategy - unless you enjoy feeding the trolls.

Cheers,

Conrad

Reply to
Conrad

Which would apparently make me born stupid and ignorant- see, it still works.

Again, flames are a troll's delight. Why indulge them? True stupidity implies a lack of processing power upstairs. Why chastise someone who is limited in this way? Ignorance is a simple lack of knowledge (I do know the differerence, but sometimes defer to common usage, which often does not differentiate between similar, but distinct adjectives), but not all folks fill their knowledge buckets up at the same rate.

Berating those who are a little slower to acknowledge reality (and yes, a flaming death on the highway is a definite reality) probably doesn't do as much to convey the reality as it does to reveal the poster's character.

A while back, I saw a post on another forum. As I read it, I laughed so hard that I blew my beer right out my nose, and had to spend a while cleaning my keyboard. Seems he had a 300D that wouldn't shut off, and he had gone to the local auto parts store, where they disconnected not one, but BOTH battery terminals, to no avail. The poster clearly had no knowledge of diesels, the mechanical nature of the fuel system in his car, and even less knowledge of basic electricity (both terminals?). Thank goodness some of those reading (those who weren't laughing too hard to type) gave the guy a clue. Politely. He fixed his problem, he may or may not still be stupid, and he's a little less ignorant. And in _my_ book, that's a good thing.

Cheers,

Conrad

Reply to
Conrad

If I may..

I just started read>

Reply to
Aaron

"there are those who bought a Benz for other reasons, and who may be just a bit clueless about things mechanical. "

Just a bit clueless? This guy says he has a car that recently developed a problem where he has to hold the steering wheel at 40 degrees to the left to go straight down the road. And if he let's go, "it will immediately jerk to the right posing a potentially deadly problem on the interstate." And then he says he never thought of this being a death trap and persists in asking questions about what to look for to self diagnose it, even after being repeatidly told that he should not drive it and have a pro look at it. Give me a break!

"There is one company which has consistently released some of the poorest, least reliable, most security-oblivious software I have ever seen. In excess of 99% of all viruses I have ever seen victimize this company's software"

Wasn't it Willy Sutton who when asked why he robbed banks said "Cause that's where the money is?" The most direct way for someone creating a virus to attack computers is through the O/S, since that is the controlling software of the system and it's interface to the outside world. And it's only natural that those seeking to create viruses that will spread and screw up systems will concentrate on the most popular O/S's run on computers throughout the world.

" Do you know why DCOM and RPC are just stunningly bad ideas when run on a machine connected to the Internet? Or do you just blindly drive around the Internet with your front wheels wobbling?"

Like comparing apples and oranges. One doesn't need to know much at all about how a car operates to realize that the car in question is obviously seriously unsafe. A correct analogy might be someone continuing to ask questions about how to check out his PC with flames coming out the back, even after being told to turn it off and have a pro inspect it.

Reply to
trader4

Can I throw my broken ball joint story in about here? Was stationed in Germany in early '60s. Had shipped a 1958 Dodge with the D500 engine (rather large one at that) upon assignment. Made a left turn onto the base one morning and just as I did so the right, lower ball joint gave loose and the bottom of the wheel flipped out at about a 45 degree angle. When this happened it snapped the brake line and of course when I hit the brakes nothing happened. I slid to a rather embarrassing stop right in front of the gate guard. He was as surprised as me. Here's the interesting part.....I had well exceeded 100 mph the day before on the autobahn. Talk about luck! One other thing for the initial poster....GET YOUR FRONT END LOOKED AT BEFORE DRIVING FURTHER! Sorry. Didn't mean to shout. Just wanted to save you some embarrassment....or worse.

Reply to
Ernie Sparks

Well they really are stupid...

Sorry couldn't resist.

I am with Conrad on this one. It's doesn't hurt to be nice.

Marty

Reply to
Martin Joseph

I have given you a break. I know nothing about Ben, but I must confess that there was an age when the idea of something screwing up with life-altering results didn't occur to me. I thought (no, clearly "thought" is the wrong word) suffered from the delusion that I was invulnerable. Perhaps Ben is that age. Perhaps even you were at one time?

This idea has merit - but somewhat falls apart when you consider markets that are not Microsoft-dominated. For example, Web servers are tasty targets for hackers - And Microsoft IIS only has about

1/3 of that market. Yet it's IIS that keeps getting hacked and virused - not the Apache Web server which enjoys about a 66% market share. And unfortunately, while, for example RPC and DCOM _are_ some glaring holes into the OS, the majority of viruses are written against equally glaring holes in various Microsoft applications. Which, due to fundamental defects in design architecture, the O/S puts far too much faith in.

And that doesn't even begin to address the internal flaws. I've seen many non-Microsoft systems getting hammered on a daily basis with non-scheduled outages measuring 0.00 over a period of years. I have yet to see MS systems consistently approach that level of stability. And that's not just my anecdotal evidence - check the top fifty uptimes at:

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Not exactly dominated by the world's best and most popular O/S. And the scary thing about the Win2k servers (my favorite MS O/S, by the way) on this list is that some of the recent security patches are impossible to apply without rebooting - these guys are targets - possibly infected right now. Google "scob virus" then tell me you want to visit their websites. On a Solaris, Unix, BSD or Linux system, you can upgrade and tune pieces of the system with no downtime. It really is possible to do it better than MS does.

But somehow people persist in showing a devotion to Bill Gates that I can assure you is not reciprocated. All I can do is shrug - I've also seen people devotedly drive around Chevy Vegas until there were no longer enough loosely-connected rust particles to keep four wheels on the ground. Go figure.

Not really - I'm just suggesting that what may be common sense to one is arcane and possibly not intuitive knowledge to others. But you've got me really worried about my PCs - I thought they were supposed to have flames coming out the back - those darn AMD processors ;-)

Conrad

Reply to
Conrad

As I've said repeatedly, I have not been driving the car. I stopped after being told of the possibility that the car might suddenly be rendered uncontrollable on the road. As I've also said before, I'm not a mechanic, but I'm willing to learn and that's what I'm here to do. I sincerely appreciate it when people share their own knowledge and experiences. Truthfully, had it not been for some of the people here, I would still be driving the car and putting others and myself in danger. But it teaches me nothing to hear an anonymous stranger call me stupid without contributing anything of value. Anyway, I got the car looked at and all it needs is new tires. Thanks to all who pointed me in the right direction.

Ben

Reply to
Ben

But it teaches me

Teaching requires a pupil able to learn: if you truly believe new tires will cure a loose wheel perhaps understanding mechanical aspects of the car is beyond your ken, particularly when you inspected and spun the present tires and found nothing visibly wrong with them.

If money is a concern, have the car inspected at the nearest MB dealer, then bring it to your favorite local shop for the repairs. If it was me, I would have the work done by the dealer for peace of mind, if nothing else.

Canoli

Canoli

Reply to
canoli

On 2005-04-15 22:17:59 -0700, "Ben" said: Anyway, I got the car looked at and all it needs is new tires.

That isn't possible, unless your previous statement about the wheel being loose was wrong?

Tires don't make a wheel loose, although they can make a car feel like it has a loose wheel on the road...

Marty

Reply to
Martin Joseph

I had a hunch it was a tyre. As i said earlier it happened to me a few years ago with a different car. The tread separated from the steel belt and formed a somewhat large bubble, I couldn't see it either at first. Maybe i parked with it at the bottom on the road a couple of times but i was on a longish trip and put it down to knocking the wheel alignment out a bit so i tweaked that a bit fairly unsuccessfully. Upon arriving home a couple of days later the tyre was obvious to me and it scared me as it could have given up the ghost anytime. What was even more surprising was the tyre place where i bought the bad tyre didn't have any 2nd thoughts or arguments about replacing it. I'm not used to levels of service like that. Of course i still had the problem of having to tweak the wheel alignment back to somewhere near the correct position but i don't remember that being a problem or more than a few minutes work. I think you threw all of us when you stated the wheel was loose. That IS a problem but maybe you threw it in as a red herring. My stepdaughter complained of the same problem a few years ago and remembering my experience i told her. She told her mechanic what i said and it did save her some dollars as the mechanic hadn't considered the tyre and would have started attacking the car with spanners if she hadn't put the penny in the slot and mentioned tyre.

To view the day to day life of a loser go here.

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Reply to
Jim Vatunz

"Anyway, I got the car looked at and all it needs is new tires. Thanks to all who pointed me in the right direction. Ben "

Oh really Ben? Now I know for sure you're a troll. Let's recap what you claimed starting from the beginning:

"I also noticed that the steering alignment is very much off, as I have to hold the wheel about 30-40 degrees to the left just to keep it straight on the road. If I let go of the wheel, it will immediately jerk to the right (this poses a potentially deadly problem on the interstate). I've inspected the tires and they look fine with no bulges or anything unusual. "

"Tire pressure is good. I jacked up the front end on both sides and they both spin fine, but I noticed the right wheel has a little bit of give when shaking it left-to-right."

"I've looked at the tie rods and nothing is rusted or loose. Everything seems very well intact. Could one of the problems be the steering damper? Obviously the loose right wheel is a problem too, but I can't figure out exactly why it's loose. Is it going to fall off if I drive the car? "

"I was very surprised when I got all these responses saying that the car is a deathtrap. I never thought of it being something that would result in a loss of steering altogether."

So, let's get all this straight. In a period of two weeks, your car got to the point that you had to hold the wheel at 40 degrees to go straight and keep it on the road. If you let go, you said the car jerked to the right so hard that it was potentially deadly. Yet, you're profess surprise when told not to drive the car because it's dangerous.

You find a right wheel that's loose when you shake it, inspected the tires and said they looked OK, yet all is now solved with some new tires. I also find it amazing that someone that professes to know so little about either cars or how serious this problem you described is, would know what tie rod ends are, or a steering damper, yet you brought up the terms.

IMO, a troll for sure!

Reply to
trader4

Did you enjoy the beer and/or wine?

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

Reply to
Dori A Schmetterling

I think you are a troll.

Reply to
Martin Joseph

" Well they really are stupid... Sorry couldn't resist. I am with Conrad on this one. It's doesn't hurt to be nice. "

Marty

Nice going Marty. You say it doesn't hurt to be nice, but here you are calling people here who use MSFT Windows stupid. Must be nice to be real smart like you!

Reply to
trader4

"That isn't possible, unless your previous statement about the wheel being loose was wrong? Tires don't make a wheel loose, although they can make a car feel like it has a loose wheel on the road...

Marty

Gee, Marty, maybe you're finally starting to figure out that all this BS doesnt add up and this clown is a troll!

Reply to
trader4

Umm - I suspect that Martin didn't break his advice. It's called "humor", and a touch of it here and there doesn't hurt. Martin had his tongue firmly in his cheek when he wrote this - or he wouldn't be running Windows himself ;-)

Conrad

Reply to
Conrad

amd i thought it was winders

the case, minus a few cans!

Reply to
pool man

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