55bloke Posted April 20, 2009 Posted April 20, 2009 This happened to my brother, 40 miles from home whilst returning from a holiday in the Lakes. He felt a thump, and the front end sagged, but no more dramatic than that- he thought it was a blowout!The offending pothole, and skid marksThis is what they found when they got out of the carBottom ball joint sheered off, drive shaft pulled out of the diff Fortunately, the RAC man was sympathetic to a cherished car, and helped remove the bumper before using "soft" straps to get the car onto the truck. Deposited it in my brother's yard. Fortunately, he had a spare wing, in the right colour, AND a drive shaft and ball joint in his spares bin, and had it up and running again in a weekend!
trigger Posted April 20, 2009 Posted April 20, 2009 Shit a brick! , Done a proper job of that! I'd be straight on to the local council about that with them photos, Got to be a claim there, think there is a website in fact set up for that sure of thing. At least no-one was hurt!. *Edit* here's that site http://www.potholes.co.uk/
AXrescuer Posted April 20, 2009 Posted April 20, 2009 I hope a complaint to the appropriate authority will see some compensation coming his way. That could have been a very nasty accident.
Station Posted April 20, 2009 Posted April 20, 2009 That's rather dramatic! How deep was the pot hole?! Was it half hole/half knackered ball joint? Could've been tragic!
Guest Posted April 20, 2009 Posted April 20, 2009 Crikey! That happened to me in a mk3 Fiesta (at 2mph while parking, luckily). About 0.28 seconds later I realised that the front end knock that I'd been ignoring for 10,000 miles was a kippered lower balljoint. Fortunately it didnt take out the wing or shaft on mine!
retrogeezer Posted April 20, 2009 Posted April 20, 2009 I see they have done a great job of repairing it too.....NOT!I seem to spend 95% of my driving time avoiding the ridiculous amount of potholes on the roads - they are in a shocking state.
55bloke Posted April 20, 2009 Author Posted April 20, 2009 It's chilling to think that 15 mins before that, they were doing motorway speeds, and a day or two earlier, winding along high passes!! My brother is a highly competent engineer, and says he'd heard the ball joint start to creak just a few days earlier, and had it in his to-do list, but with no great urgency, coz knocking ball joints go on for thousands of miles, don't they!?!!
55bloke Posted April 20, 2009 Author Posted April 20, 2009 I see they have done a great job of repairing it too.....NOT!I seem to spend 95% of my driving time avoiding the ridiculous amount of potholes on the roads - they are in a shocking state. Absolutely!! Sheffield must have some of the worst roads in the country, they're truly dreadful. The council have just been awarded a HUGE grant for a 10 year programme to fettle the roads. This is great, but seems to assume that once they start, the repaired holes will stay repaired, and that no new pot holes will appear in the meantime!
Milford Cubicle Posted April 20, 2009 Posted April 20, 2009 A similar thing happened to my mum's Accord Caused by this The council refused to take the blame for it, insisting the road had been inspected and OK'd recently. Within a couple of weeks it had been patched up! In the end she claimed through insurance.
j-j Posted April 20, 2009 Posted April 20, 2009 That's bad!But I must say the pot hole photos look pretty tame - may be the photo hides the hugeness of it? Ditto to the Honda pot hole.The ones around Glasgow are SO bad and very frequent that there was recently a Yahoo discussion about them being the worst in the UK! They're so bad sometimes that they actually make cars change direction not by driver choice! - they're very dangerous to bikers - especially on corners where the council fill the holes up with crappy loose tar that lasts a month then disintegrates again leaving 'gravel' everywhere waiting for 2 wheelers to take it too fast. And as a Cyclist I can tell you they are magnified by a factor of 10 when you've got no suspension and over 8bar/120psi tyres!What then are we paying road tax for? I know it's no longer called 'road fund licence' but what is it paying for then?
retrogeezer Posted April 21, 2009 Posted April 21, 2009 The top pothole has already been filled in once hasn't it and is breaking up?..Doesn't look too bad but must have have been a shite repair.The 2nd you can see a previous repair and the middle bit has just broken up again leaving a very sharp edge.I've always wondered how these 'road repairers' get away with their shoddy workmanship.....how many other things would you have done where that would be satisfactory???Oh yeh, it's council tax money so who cares how it is spent eh..
STUNO Posted April 21, 2009 Posted April 21, 2009 IMHO Neither of those potholes are enough to cause any damage to suspension. The worst either may do is finish off already seriously damaged joints etc. The first one would only be slightly felt if you drove over it.I regularly drive over much worse roads with no ill effects on the car.
Milford Cubicle Posted April 21, 2009 Posted April 21, 2009 Yeah, the pothole wasn't that deep, but very rough and with a sharp edge to it.Maybe it's a flaw with the Honda front double wishbone setup used on the 800 and Accord.
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