Close Calls in Car Maintenance

I know the Lord has been watching over us these past two years when we can't afford insurance or even a visit to the doctor. Last year when Rex and his dad were working on breaks, the car fell on Rex's hand in a way that should have broken it. Once he got his hand free, he discovered it only broke the skin and caused a lot of bruising. Since Rex makes such a long commute twice a week, I am ever so grateful that they replaced the brakes and shocks on his car prior to getting the job in Houston.

On the way home from an interview in Houston in September, Rex's car started shaking about a mile or so from home. Once he got home, he discovered that one of the back tires' tread was breaking up. He got the back two tires replaced and rotated them all.

Last weekend, when Rex was just 40 miles out of Houston on his way home, the same thing happened. Only this time, there was no shaking. He was going 80 mph in the passing lane when something told him to stop. When he heeded the prompting and pulled over, he noticed the tire was completely bald and the entire tread was wrapped around the shocks. He managed to yank the tread off and put on the doughnut, and, fortunately, he was less than two miles away from a tire shop. It was a miracle nothing worse happened because it is common for cars to roll over and the passengers to die when the tread comes off. It's the very reason all those Ford Explorers with Firestone tires were recalled. So now we have 4 new tires on the car.

The next day, we also got the car serviced since we hadn't done so in a long time. The fuel filter was so saturated that it was dripping. They also flushed the coolant (?) but sludge got caught and created complications that the Express Lube couldn't fix, so they took it over to a sister repair shop (creeping a little at a time because the car kept overheating) and got everything fixed without charging us extra.

Ironically, when the other teacher's car overheated on the way to the basketball game (in the earlier story), the problem was the exact same thing we dealt with at the car shop a few days earlier. I'm certain the Lord carried the car through till we were able to get it repaired. When the tire incident occurred, we decided to get everything else checked as well. Even though we had procrastinated the maintenance (due to the expense), we were extremely glad to have taken care of it before something like that happened at a less opportune time.