Luck

I work colleague once asked me if I could give him a lift to the garage where his car was in for a service. When we got there the car wasn't quite ready. It was over a pit with a man trying to find out where the excess play was coming from in the steering. The owner told me that it was a good car to drive except when it was windy, then it was "hard to steer" particularly on the motorway.

While we were waiting I noticed that when the engineer moved the road wheel the steering wheel didn't move like it should. There was about 10-20 degrees of play! Looking down the exposed column I could see the problem was the rubber coupling down by the foot pedals. On closer inspection you could see that one of the two bolts holding it together was missing and was lying in the foot well. The other had also worn itself loose and when the engineer tapped it with a screwdriver it also fell out leaving the steering wheel free to rotate.

I was quite shaken by this and told the owner that he must be "feeling pretty lucky". He replied that he didn't believe in luck as he was a Christadelphian. I wasn't able to persuade him to choose my lottery numbers for me.

Reply to
CWatters
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I was in a car once where that coupling gave way completely at about 50mph.

It was an old Triumph 2000. Driver said 'hey look' and waggled the wheel about. Had no effect at all.

He put the brakes on very gently and got down to about 30 before the car veered off and ended up looping slowly round on the (luckily) wide grass verge.

Reply to
PC Paul

I had one go on a (badly) crash repaired viva, luckily no damage/injuries, I was turning right when it disconnected completely.

Reply to
mrcheerful

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