TireSmoke.org

So last Sunday I took the Regal to church. That went well. I then decided to take my daughter to work in it. As I pulled out on the main road, I heard an unfamiliar sound coming from the right rear. I looked in the right mirror and saw some sort of smoke coming from the wheel area. Not good. I pulled over for inspection. Bummer, the part of the strut that holds the spring bottom had broken off of the strut. This allowed the spring cradle to push down on the tire. I gimped it home at max speed of 7 mph. I made several calls to parts stores, and checked online for the least expensive option for repair. The cheapest struts I could get that were complete with springs were $75.00 each, shipped to me. I didn't want to waste any more money on this beater, and I didn't want to wait a week for parts. Fortunately I have a brother with an Impala SS, who believes in removing perfectly good parts from his car and replacing them. The struts and springs were a direct fit for the Regal. Mostmint's Impala was willing to be an organ donor for a fellow w body in distress. I ran to his place that night and got the parts. With about 3 hours of grunt labor on Wednesday, Fred32v and I had the Regal back on the road. It made it to the Cleveland car show and back, and has gone back and forth to work all week. Back to status quo, waiting for another breakdown!!!

GM

Good story, GM. I love to make good repairs for little or no money. Doesn't happen much these days.

GMJohnny wrote:Fortunately I have a brother with an Impala SS, who believes in removing perfectly good parts from his car and replacing them.

Pretty sure you've taken more than a few perfectly good parts off a car in the name of performance. Pulley, air cleaner, intake manifolds, ...

I think it was 2008. I was driving my driver car 1998 Grand Prix on the Taconic Parkway doing about 75 mph. I heard a loud BANG! Immediately thought 'blowout" grabbed the wheekl with both hands, but nothing happened. As i glanced in the side view mirror I saw lots of white smoke from the driver side rear wheel. I eased it up on the grass. No flat, but boy was that tire hot. I had my friend Pat (Sixfiend on the forum) and another guy with me. We took off the tire and saw that the spring in the strut had broken. Th bottom of the spring was out of its pocket and rubbing along the tire. If it was normal times i would have taken the easy way out and called AAA. We were at lest 50 miles from home. But this was not normal, we had my Chevy II up at Lebanon Vlley for the NHRA points meet. This was day 2 and we had round 1 to run. So we had to get there. We couldn't get the broken piece of spring out, but were able to move it into the middle where it kind of floated. Then Pat, with brute force and a lug wrench pried the remainder of the spring back on its base. We drove to Lebanon Valley (a little slower), raced, won round one, then drove home that night. The only other thing we did, was put me in the back seat because I'm the lightest of the three of us. Used a different car to get back the next day. I can't figure out why that would break ona low mileage car. But thats my story and I'm sticking to it

MostMint wrote:

GMJohnny wrote:Fortunately I have a brother with an Impala SS, who believes in removing perfectly good parts from his car and replacing them.

Pretty sure you've taken more than a few perfectly good parts off a car in the name of performance. Pulley, air cleaner, intake manifolds, ...

I'm never guilty of removing ANY good parts off of a vehicle. I ALWAYS replace ONLY parts that NEED replaced. I've replaced many "broken" air filters with ones that were just a little better. I had a cam put in the Vette because I knew it was going to wear out at some point in time ( maybe in the year 2075 ), so I called it preventative maintenance. I'm good that way!! You can never be to careful you know....

GM