Sent: Sunday, October 08, 2006 7:45 PM
Subject: Sedan Car Crash - 10-7-06

What a deal.

We just returned from Sacramento NSRA run which turned out to be full of adventures to say the least.

First we had heavy rain for hours and hours till it stopped well below Redding on Wednesday. They we thought we'd be ok on that account but it again rained super hard Wednesday night and early Thursday morning - then the weather was clear.

Second just after it stopped raining Wednesday morning we started to get a slight vibration that felt like an out of balance tire. I tried a few speeds and it seemed to vary some but was still there - I thought it might be a driveshaft bearing. So we stopped on the side of the road and found that the rear drivers tire had a small amount of tread missing and a little more ready to come off it seemed. The air was still in the tire but it looked unsafe to drive very far. We found a small side road and found that about 30 mph was ok for vibration and we set off on down to Williams were we were able to find a small tire shop next to a NAPA store. The car still looked like there was no problem with the tire still fully inflated, but missing some of it's tread.. We bought a new "golden' tire there (high cost) and looked at the one we replaced which was still nearly fully treaded, no real wear at all. We had heard people talk about old tires being bad just of age so we thought there might be some truth to the story but at over a $110 for the tire we decided to wait till we got back to Grant Pass next week and replace the other one just in case.

Finally after great nice weather and a clean car (5 bucket of water to wash off the mud and grim) we had an enjoyable weekend them. We left mid day Saturday to come back and was in for the ride of our life so to speak. All was well, no overheating even with the air on running fine at 5 mph over the speed limit nice day for cruising on home. When we got to just about Dunsmuir on I-5 we had a very slight vibration appeared again. It was very slight so we thought the fellow in Williams may have miss balanced the new tire or the road was rough. This imbalance didn't last long at all, after about 3 minutes or so it happened we were in for all heck. The tire we hadn't replaced evidently had it's tread come off - we had big sound from the rear passenger tire and evidently the tread wrapped itself around possible our rear end. The car locked up on that side and drove us to the right straight into the guard rail where we rode it for a few second after which it spun us on around out back into the fast traffic lane. The pics are attached.

We wore our seat belts and got our of the car very soon after and very we did not get rammed by a fully loaded semi coming behind us which we could have happened. We were blocking both lanes. A car stopped before us and we were able to use their phone to call the Police and towing company. People that passed had to drive in the very inside emergency lane to pass. We were very very lucky.

So we had both of our big rear tires fail on the same trip - who would have known. They were BF Goodrich and as I said with no apparent wear gone. Our car I'm sure will be totaled by the insurance company and we'll have t buy it back. It'll be a while before the '33 Chevy is on the road again. All four fenders are damaged (front ones ruined) the frame is severely bent on the right side and the axle appear bent and spring brackets off and bent.

Ann is till going through with what seems like whiplash, I'm less painful but still in some pain in my neck and shoulder but we're alive and here to talk about it.

Just thought we'd let people know what happened.

In the past I might have had some minor cause for our car stories but this one is not my fault and I'm not sure how to proceed - I think these tires were a death trap want to happened and it got us - Bill & Ann