So my monitor backlight problem came back last night, just as I was sitting down to watch Bruce Almighty (starring Jim Carrey as god). The timing is particularly crummy because I don’t have enough time to drop it off for service before my flight to Victoria early Wednesday morning.
By the way, if you’ve tried to contact me via email in the past two weeks or so and I haven’t written you back, I’m sorry! I’ve been really swamped, I’m going to be trying to write everyone back tonight (but if I don’t, please drop me a line to remind me!). Also tonight: wrapping presents 🙂
Finally, yesterday, I bought my car a Christmas present — a new pair of shoes! The car feels more responsive now…. quieter too.

The sad part was that the mechanic told me my left rear rim is warped, so I’m going to have to get that replaced at some point. Question for my mechanically-inclined readers: the mechanic said it could have been caused by an improperly tightened lugnut, does that make sense?


Comments

6 responses to “Yum”

  1. i suppose it’s possible to warp a wheel by ridiculously overtightening a lug nut, but not really in the real world. one tight enough to do that would certainly also warp the brake rotor (assuming it was on a disc brake hub). the most common causes of bending a wheel are hitting a curb, or, much more likely, if an aluminum wheel has had its tire changed on the wrong kind of machine (spindle and bar type machines like the coates 40-40) instead of a rim clamp machine designed for mag wheels. on a spindle and bar, the wheel itself is the fulcrum for the pry bar and bears all of the stress of removing the tire. on a mag machine, the machine itself is the fulcrum, and the wheel suffers far less stress.

  2. the pictures are alright.

  3. jim carey was NOT god in bruce almighty – morgan freeman played that role.
    a sad lapse of judgement in an otherwise riveting journal – we’ve made bets in the office as to whether your backlight will mysteriously fix itself (like mine did) or whether it will conk out, plunging you into LCD purgatory (as did happen to my dad’s laptop).
    we’ve also got a crack taskforce working on your tyre dilemma as jim was clearly bluffing in his response above. probably. i don’t even drive.

  4. jph: you know, i thought about explaining that morgan freeman played god proper, but it would have made my parens so much longer than I wanted.
    and i thought no-one would catch me. hah.
    jim: thanks for the detailed explanation. i’ll have to take a closer look to know exactly how it’s warped.

  5. mike/scouse Avatar
    mike/scouse

    “i suppose it’s possible to warp a wheel by ridiculously overtightening a lug nut” nope, “would certainly also warp the brake rotor” nope. The wheel and disk are held by compression to the hub. The hub takes the lump sum of the load from the wheel, the studs/bolts just hold the wheel in place. The stud would snap before you get anywhere near distorting the wheel or disk. Wheels do have a degree of flexibility designed into them and this is the reason why it took so long to design an alternative to the spoked wheel. Even putting a wheel on incorrectly and tightening the nuts would not warp the wheel, the nuts would not be able to exert enough to permenantly damage the wheel. If the wheel was warped then it whould have been noticable from within the car before changing the tryes. The wheel would not be balanced and at 60mph driving would be uncomfortable. This unbalance would also be apparent now. If the tech was unable to balance the wheel you will still feel a vibration through the steering or if the tech managed to balance it (unlikely) there will be a fairly hefty wack of counter balance stuck on the rim. If its a rear wheel on a front wheel drive car the wheel bearling will go very soon if its warped.
    Hitting a cerb will warp a rim but will usually leave cosmetic damage on the rim too as it has to be a fairly hefty wack.
    Best way to check is to get a second opinion (get someone to rebalance it) they will realise if summit is up straight away, or get a dti setup on the wheel to check for deflection.

  6. reasonable steve Avatar
    reasonable steve

    i concur with the above statement otherwise 90% of motorists would fuck up their tyres evertime they parallel parked next to a kerb. get it checked out by someone else.