SirCharlo

Hey all!

Just a short story to remind you to not take anything for granted...

A friend of mine got a pretty sweet car as a gift from his parents, a Mazda Protege5 2003 (IIRC). Anyway, nice car, awesome gift. You'd think that he would take care of it, right?

Mister friend here loves thrills, so he was always driving his car way too fast, especially in curbs... Well, it caught up to him recently.

His tires were finished, but "he didn't have enough money to change them". It had rained. Mister tries out his car in a sharp curb... At 75kph.

You guessed it.
He lost control of his Mazda.



Thankfully, he was lucky... That's all he got.
Damage to front left wheel well (pretty much everything in there is scrapped or damaged), plus some sort of transmission leak (perhaps a problem with the differential), and a busted rear mag.



It's gonna cost him about the same price to fix it than to get another car.
Pretty bad, but it could have been much, much worse. He could have died.




Before you speed or do something else that's stupid, think. And think again.

If you don't, you could end up paying with more than just money.

MelJ

At least he is okay. That's the important part. He's VERY lucky. Safety should always be a person's number one concern with their car. I don't see why people cheap out on stuff like that. He could've spent 50 bucks on some shitty Pep Boys tires to hold him down until he got some funds for some really good ones. I did it when I was in my first year of college.

DieMaster

iTrader: (5)

i was in the same situation. broke barly scraping by and my tires were bald. one had the metal mesh showing. i was afarid they were going to blow out on the freeway with my luck. but i borrowed some monney from a friend and a co-worker (also a friend) and bought some BF goodrich tires that were on sale. when the shop swiched them out. the guy came in withthe mesh tire, sat down and said "if you had gone another 100 miles on these, you proably wouldnt be sitting here today." eye opener to me.

xRiCeBoYx

iTrader: (22)

Holy crap. You had a tire down to the steel belt...?

and @SirCharlo yea, tires and suspension are 2 things I try and be meticulous about maintaining, simply because they are the major links between you and the road, not specifically getting the best of the best, but stuff that will make due and make my vehicle operate normally. If one of those things go, then bad things are bound to happen. Luckily for your friend, a little bit of vehicular damage is all that ensued. Your friend might want get the strut tower checked to make sure it didn't get bent out of shape from hitting hard enough..

kbook

oh my. I saw something bended? is that the control arm ? It looks like it's gonna be expensive repair. However, he's lucky.

mac25

naw, just use the bfh-0125 tool, it'll fix all that up in one hit (big fu***** hamer). jk

xRiCeBoYx

iTrader: (22)

That's the old model. You gotta step it up to the BFH-3000

lol.. I naturally started to type in "BFG"

mac25

oh damb! i didn't know the 3000 was out for civilian use yet! lol

Mad Dog Tannen

All you really need is a roll of duct tape and a can of WD40. If it moves and it ain't supposed to, duct tape it. If it it ain't moving but it is supposed to, spray it with WD40.

SirCharlo

Hey guys this is great! It's gonna save my friend so much money!

Seriously though, he knows this guy who's good with cars... Anyway he had a used tranny put in, and he also had something fixed in his steering system (can't remember what).
It cost him 1100$... So far. They're not done yet.

I went to see where he lost control, and man, to be going 80kph there, he really had to accelerate damn fast. He was kind of asking for it.

mac25

we're here to help, lol. but seriously it's good that the car was the only thing damaged and not your bud.

xRiCeBoYx

iTrader: (22)

Oh wait, I was military.. Forgot about that part.. hahaha

mac25

hahaha oh ya. probably got some buddies that'd let you sneak into the navy base and use it, lol.

xRiCeBoYx

iTrader: (22)

sneak in? psh.. straight up jacked that ****.. Put it in my big green sea bag and walked it right off the ship

and I don't need to sneak onto a navy base.. I still have valid DoD decals and a reserve ID.. hahaha

mac25

haha nice! are there any bases that let you do 0-100mph runs?

fst64_v8pwr

Ouch, hope it does save him some money, bc that would be a pretty penny.....

lazlong

What a lucky SOB. Last time I did that I had to pay $1200 for 2 new rims, $400 for new exhaust and, $1000 for new suspension. That's not even going into the body work it needed then, which I never got around to fixing as about 6 months later a kid made a left hand turn from the right lane right in front of me and... you can figure the rest out. lol.

Glad everyone is ok tho. Let's hope he learned a lesson.

303jordan

Yeah my friend was tailgating this car at 65 mph and had to swerve into oncoming traffic and went off the road. his car looked pretty much like that, so wear you seatbelts, i would have died if i didnt.

SirCharlo

Seatbelts are not an option! Not wearing them is equal to a death wish.


My friend told me yesterday that now every time he's in someone's car and they take a curb, he freaks out, even when they're going slow... I hope it's permanent!

Then again, he also told me he can't wait for winter, to drift. I guess he's not that traumatized, heh?
Man.

Nosepicker

First, glad he's okay but the "Mister" could have bought used tires, you know. Or even have gone to the junkyard and paid a lot less for a set of tires.

I'm just saying, if you're really broke be creative in finding solutions.

Mad Dog Tannen

Drift in a FF?

mac25

i drifted last winter in my FWD civic. it's hard though, if you go into the slide too fast before letting your front wheels spin you just slide in a straight line. but if you're aat the right speed you ca get the front wheels to bite in and pull you in an arch arround a bend. as i've said before i had a few nice ones then slid into a curb and brock the black plastic under the front wheel. ...but meh, free weight reduction, lol.