My car has died, quite impressively
Firstly, apologies for not writing anything for a little while. Last week was pretty hectic and I’ve had a few things occupying my mind and time. But I’m back at my computer now and without further adue, let’s get straight into things.
Well last Saturday my friend Mutsumi came down from Tokyo for a week, visiting family and me. We had a good week actually and last Sunday we headed up to Nago to see the cherry blossoms. They are much pinker (is that a word?) in Okinawa than in other parts of Japan, and you can hopefully see that in the photo below. But the weekend was so tiring. It started with me getting up at 5am to listen to the first Superleague game of the season (a loss at home to Warrington, incidentally), but then proceeded to have only 15 hours of sleep over the next 3 days, while driving for over 14 hours. It was certainly a draining time.
Okinawa cherry blossoms Kyoto cherry blossoms
But then we get to Tuesday night, and I was about to go from my apartment to the shops for some food. I put my car into reverse and started to let out the clutch, when something made a slight grinding sound. I thought I hadn’t got the gear in correctly so I checked and let the clutch out again. This time the car moved backwards about a foot and then just stopped. Something was obviously wrong so I got out and wandered around the car. when I got to the passenger side, I started to realise what had happened. Basically, the front left wheel had dropped off! And not simply the wheel had dropped off, but the driveshaft to this wheel had just broken off the main shaft, meaning the wheel was hanging on my the shock absorber. This is not good! It was awful too - there was brake fluid draining from the snapped driveshaft, and it looked like my car was bleeding to death! I wanted to go get a bandage and wrap up its gaping wound! I was really annoyed as I live out in the sticks and need a car to get anywhere (e.g. the bus to Naha takes around 1 hour and there is around 1 bus every hour; if I was driving it would take around 20 minutes).
In retrospect, I was pretty lucky this happened in the garage and not while I was driving. If I had been on the road, then I would have definitely been in an accident; while if I had been on the expressway, at best I would have been in hospital with broken bones. The wheel would have gone under the car and the back end would have probably gone up and started me rolling at high speed. You’ve got to look at the bright points of everything. The car is pretty much a write-off. A replacement driveshaft isn’t an easy thing to install, plus it has got me wondering what is going to die next and if it will go when I’m driving this time. Plus, I have my shaken (compulsory car inspection) coming up in August and it’ll need a fair bit of work to get through that. The repairs are just going to end up costing more than the car itself. So I am on the lookout for a new car. One of my co-workers is trying to sell me his very nice and very souped up car, although $5,000 is a little out of my price range. I have got my sights set on another small car, and have seen a couple costing around $900 which is much closer to my price range. Although I have also seen these ATVs driving around Okinawa which are very cool. They are completely impractical but would be great for getting me to dive sites that are a bit out of the way and would be very nice in summer! Plus one of my co-workers has told me that it would be possible to drive up the stairs and to my lessons on it, thereby gaining the ultimate respect of my students and also going down in Okinawan folklore! You know, I could easily get a cheap car and also get this for fun driving around.
But we’ll have to see. I’ve a couple of decisions to make before I think about getting a car so I’ll cross this particular bridge when I come to it. But that’s been the main event that’s happened in the past week. I’ll hopefully be able to report back a little later in the week with some more information, and fingers crossed I’ll be a little closer to not having to rely on public transportation again. Take care, dive safely, and look out for wheels falling off your car!
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Hi Dave,
Those ATV’s are the big thing in Samui right now. People use them for driving on the normal raods which is dfefinately not a good idea at high speed.
Good luck with the purchase of a new car.