Bounciest car ever

I was behind a car with New York plates yesterday that had the most worn out shocks/struts I’ve ever sene in all my years. I have never seen a car bounce that much just from taking off from a stoplight…at a very modest rate of acceleration. The tail of this thing swas bouncing up & down, and up * down, and up & down. It was making me seasick just watching it. How can anybody drive a vehicle that bad? And from New York to New Hampshire?

MB–Unfortunately, some folks will drive a car that is doing all sorts of dangerous things–until it actually stops running.

In the case of a car with worn-out shocks/struts, it will likely wind up in an accident before the car actually stops running, unfortunately. But–you already knew that, and you already knew that some folks will drive absolutely unsafe vehicles.

The capacity for folks to ignore things that are dangerous to themselves, loved ones, and those with whom they share the road is…appalling.

Remember this thread? High-Heat Shoes & Drums

Read all three pages to get an idea of the crazy, insane, and very dangerous conditions some car owners try to get away with. This thread scared the ever-loving stuff out of me. I still wish I could track that guy down. Just to crush his car on site!

I’ve seen a few like that here in OK. A late model Ford pickup passed me once and one could not even see the lugs on the right front wheel. It was just a total blur it was hopping up and down so fast. A few months back a Nissan Maxima went by me doing about 80 or so that car was wallowing on the highway like a small ship on rough seas.

The biggest idiot I’ve ever seen is the guy in the Dodge pickup a few years back who passed me with the right front wheel canted in at about 7 degrees negative camber. I’m pointing out his RF wheel as I noticed he had both hands on the wheel trying to keep the truck on the road. He nodded and gave me a thumbs up.
At that point I hit the brakes and got clean away from him while grabbing the phone in case an accident was about to happen.
Just 2 miles later the entire right front wheel and suspension snapped off and this guy was on the ride of his life as he was well over the speed limit. He left over a 100 feet of gouge mark in the pavement before going into the ditch in a huge cloud of dust and weeds. Sheer luck prevented him rolling the truck.

What really ticked me off is that my daughter passed me a few minutes later heading to my house. When the wheel/suspension came loose from that truck it hit the barbed wire fence and shot like a ping-pong ball clean across the opposing lane and into the barbed wire fence on the other side. If her car had been there with that wheel assembly windshield high it could have been fatal to her and my grandson.
I’m just thankful that the ball joint snapping was not delayed a few more minutes or my loved ones could have been victims.

I see this one all the time.

Tester

I had a neighbor, I noticed the tie rods hanging down,and mentioned to him he needed some work, his response, it is ok if I don’t go over 35 mph.

Coil springs and broken / missing shocks can create some interesting video…

Some people back in the day (younger ones) used to remove the front shocks completely and go tooling around town.
Watching a car bouncing like a tennis ball at a red light or a pair of headlights going wildly up and down at night made for some interesting viewing.

I drove a car like that one once. I was looking at used cars at the time & took it for a test drive. This person said nothing about it. It was like going down the road strapped to a basketball.

I saw a guy driving around town today in an old Ranger - 80-something model. I swear both front wheels were tiled in by a good 10 degrees. I’m probably exaggerating - but it certainly left nothing to the imagination.

Just because the car has NY plates doesn’t mean they drove from there. Driving down any street around here you’ll see plates from all over the place parked daily in someone’s driveway. Common practice to avoid paying; insurance, inspection fees or excise taxes.

I’ve been doing a lot more walking than driving lately and it’s the sound of worn out brakes I hear more than anything. People will borrow money to get a tattoo but fix their car? Even worse is severely under inflated tires because that has nothing to do with affordability - that’s just plain borderline criminal laziness on the same order of magnitude as not cleaning snow off your windows before getting into traffic. Traffic fatalities are up threefold this year in my city.

“Even worse is severely under inflated tires because that has nothing to do with affordability - that’s just plain borderline criminal laziness…”

I agree, but unfortunately some of these lazy (or crazy) folks cannot even be helped by others, due to their attitudes.

I recall an incident several years ago, when I pulled into my parking space at work.
A woman (total stranger) pulled into the space next to mine, and as I was getting out of my car, I noticed that her right front tire was almost flat.

I called her attention to it, and suggested that she call someone to change her tire before she attempted to leave the parking lot. She initially appeared grateful, and then asked me, “Why do you think it’s almost flat?” I thought that this was a somewhat bizarre question, but I responded that it could be a puncture, or a defective tire valve, or it could be sidewall damage.

She did not seem to understand the concept of sidewall damage, so I pointed out to her that the tire had apparently been scraped along curbs to such an extent that the original “narrow whitewall” now had grown to encompass the entire sidewall of the tire, since so much of the black rubber overlay on the sidewall had been scraped away. There were even a few small gouges in the remaining white rubber. The tire’s sidewall had the appearance of being in very bad condition.

She then asked me if that meant that she had bought a defective tire, and I calmly explained that whoever had been driving the car had scraped/hit curbs many times in order to cause severe sidewall damage like that. Her reaction was to begin SCREAMING at me, something along the lines of…“I would never do that! How dare you accuse me of that!”

I then asked her if anyone else drove her car on a regular basis, and she stated that she was the only driver, and that I should mind my own business.

I responded, “You know, you are right, that was none of my business. Have a nice day”, and I rapidly walked away from this bizarre woman who was beyond help.

VDC, constructive criticism can be lethal to hypersensitive egos these days. And that ‘Why do you think it’s almost flat?,’ ranks right up there with ‘Why do you think it’s dark at night?’ Sheesh, a little social Darwinism can’t come soon enough.

@VDC–she probably thought that the tire was o.k. because it was only almost flat on the bottom.

VDCdriver, I ran into something similar a few years ago while stopping at the grocery store one weekend. Per the usual, I parked on the outside of the lot so as to avoid door dings and so on and as I was exiting the car I noted that an SUV parked a few spaces over had 2 low tires on the passenger side. Being curious I looked and the other side was the same way with the sidewalls showing some nasty srubbing from underinflation. The rear window was plastered with PTA and My Child is an Honor Student stickers, etc.

Whe I came out a lady was loading her groceries and I thought I would politely offer a tip about her tires being underinflated. She got offended over this and while she did not scream or anything like that she did state in a somewhat rude and snippety tone that, “I check my tire pressure all of the time and did so just last week”.
A blind man could have seen those tires were running way low with sidewall damage and odds are the tire pressure had never been checked since the day the vehicle was new and went through a PDI at the selling dealer.

The thought of that SUV rolling due to a blowout with kids in it due to sheer negligence is pretty sad.