I had a little problem with my old Chevy Blazer, the one we use for trail riding and hill climbing. Seemed it leaked oil in the driveway and that’s a bear to clean up, so we took it in to a little independent car shop called B & H Repair on Meridian Road in Apache Junction. They don’t advertise, but seem to have a ton of business. It wasn’t cheap, and they even had to take the front end half off, but they fixed all the leaks in the old beast, and we went back to the desert and did a little riding. We stopped and cooked up a couple of hot dogs, ate some beans, had a cold beer, and went for a trail ride overlooking a beautiful valley and lake.

We started up a hill and all of a sudden, “Crunch!” – the right wheel fell off. I mean it folded right over and was hanging on by one piece of steel hooked to the ball joint. “Holy crapola!” – this is a Sunday, we are on a trail in the middle of nowhere, our snowbird friends ain’t even down here to call for help, and all we can hope for is cell phone coverage. (And we did have that, thankfully.)

I had seen a Jeep on the freeway a week earlier, and it had a sign on it saying “Arizona 4X4 Off Road Rescue Recovery.” I had Darlene write the phone number down and had it in the glove box at the time, so we called, and Joe, who owns the company, answered and said he’d be out, but it would take a couple of hours to get there.

The rescue company worked like dogs in the hot sun, did the impossible, and managed to get the Blazer roadworthy. After about five hours in the desert hills, and a $320 bill, we limped out of the wilderness in it. Joe told us that the cotter pin wasn’t on the nut that held the ball joint on. Well, that ball joint had been taken off the week before at the car shop when I had the leaks fixed. Now what? I now had a broken ABS brake connection, another u-joint in the front drive broken, the seal was torn up, the ball joint was bad, and I was out over $300 just to get the thing home.

I took a picture of the mess underneath and went back to show Howard at B & H Repair. I knew that they were going to deny leaving the cotter pin off, they were not going to fix the mess, and it would cost me plenty of bucks. I’d have to get an attorney and sue to get anything done.

Well, I told Howard what happened and showed him the picture. As he looked at it, I was about to say something and he said, “This is my fault. I’ll take care of everything, including your rescue costs.” I couldn’t believe it! There are still some honest people out there in the car repair business.

They fixed everything! They made it good, suggested I do a little more on a couple things in the front end, knocked a couple hundred off the price of that, and I am a happy camper! I later looked at the sign in front of their business and it says, “Bringing honesty back to car repair.” Maybe there are more out there than I thought!

Tom “Road” Blair

Website: www.tomroadblair.com