What Broke?

My son, CoolTeen, is thinking of joining a hiphop dance class with a few of his friends. So yesterday I took him and one of his classmates to a dance studio not too far from our home to make some enquiries. On the way home, there were quite a number of road bumps that I had to drive over and as I went over one of them there was a loud CRUNCH and my car started to sway left and right quite violently. I thought I had a tyre puncture. Being on the right lane, I switched on my hazard lights and slowly manuveured my car to a bus-stop nearby. At first my kids thought that I was making the car sway on purpose...they always say that I drive badly!

We all got down and I was quite surprised to note that all my tyres were OK...not a single puncture. I decided not to drive the car any further and called hubby. Hubby was out of town that day, so he said to call the AAM breakdown service. The AAM operator was polite but when he asked for my location I realised that I didn't know the name of the road I was on (even though I had travelled on it many times before), I only knew the name of the taman and that I was not too far from a Petronas station...great.

The mechanic had trouble locating us, until I finally saw a signboard near some houses with the road name on it, and told him. That was about 1½ hours later. I also called my friend MK who lived not too far from where I was and she came to fetch my son and his friend back to my house while I waited for the mechanic with my daughter, PreTeen. My son's classmate was supposed to be at our house and his parents had arranged to fetch him from there before 5 pm. It was already 4.30 pm. PreTeen had to miss her ballet class which started at 4 pm.

The mechanic located us at 5 pm, 2 hours after I called AAM. He took the car for a short test drive and the car swayed and strange grating sounds came from the rear left tyre. He changed the tyre, tested the car again but the problem persisted. Upon closer inspection, he realised that the mounting bar was broken at the section where it connected to the left rear wheel...!

It was almost 6 pm and the car workshop that I usually send my car to was closing at 7 pm, but it was quite a distance away and I wasn't sure whether my car could make the journey without any more damage to the mounting bar. I decided to drive home instead (just a few km away) and the AAM mechanic follwed me in his van. Had to go really, really , really slow as any faster than 20 km/h would cause the car to sway. Held up a whole queue of cars as I slowly inched my way home.



When hubby came home, he took some snapshots of the damage and printed out the photos. The next morning he went to the car workshop and showed the mechanic the problem (the wonders of modern technology) , ordered the parts and I called the AAM towtruck. Took a ride in the towtruck with PreTeen, sent the car for repair and the workshop owner said that it was quite a common occurance for that kind of car, which was why he could obtain the spare parts so quickly. All I can say is that it's a locally manufactured 1000cc car...

Thankfully the repairs only came up to only RM110...phew! (I thought it would be a few hundred Ringgit, at least)


This is how it should look like


The broken mounting bar


The brand new bar...in black