End of the Season

So I was driving along in the Westfield today and hit a big pothole. There was a bang, and the right side of the nose dropped. I quickly pulled over to the side of the road and took a look. A ball joint had snapped. I called my neighbor Jon, and together we studied the situation.

The ball had popped out of the socket pretty cleanly, so we jacked it up and popped it back in. Then we started applying baling wire to reinforce the joint.

After adding several loops, we lowered it back to the ground to see if it would hold.

It seemed pretty solid, and I was only about a mile from home, so we started off at about 10 MPH with lights flashing. We made it home with no incidents.

So I’ve ordered a new set of ball joints, and I guess I know what my next project is. It’s getting cold enough that I’m probably not going to get a lot more driving in before winter anyways. It was 24° F when I took it out to get coffee this morning. That was a little brisk. Even at 7 AM in the cold, it attracted a crowd of very excited young boys who wanted to know everything about it. So, if that’s the end of it’s first season, it was a pretty good one. We went out for long trips with our friends most weekends. Drove a lot of good roads, met a lot of interesting people, and had a lot of good lunches. On our last trip, the odometer passed 1,000 miles, which is more than I thought I’d get in when I was in the depths of the registration process. So I’ve got my list of improvements for the winter. I’ll get started on those as soon as I get the ball joints replaced. And hopefully next summer will be even better!