I just got off the phone with our mechanic, telling him about what my mother’s car was doing, and that my brother thought it might be the U joints or the drive shaft.

Turns out, this car doesn’t have U joints.

What he suggested was to look into the wheel rims to see if there’s any packed ice and gravel, and scrape out any that I find. Apparently, he sees this a lot with cars that drive on gravel roads. Crud gets in there and starts messing with the alignment. I mentioned that, not long ago (not the last time I used it, but the time before), when going into our driveway, the car slide off the hard packed snow and into the soft snow on the side, so there is snow in the rims. Yes, apparently that can be all it takes.

I won’t do that until after I get back from getting our taxes done, as we should be into the warmest part of the day by then; we’re expected to reach a high of -3C/27F, so any ice and snow would be softer and easier to knock out.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all I had to do was clear ice and snow out of the rims to solve the problem?

The Re-Farmer