Car paranoid wife?

Soldato
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So the Mrs end of last week is claiming there is something wrong with her car.

"It's wollowing badly in corners, and making a knocking sound. Also the tracking is definitely off"

Take it for a test drive, seems fine to me, look at it under, wiggle the wheels around etc as best I can, cant see anything wrong with it.

Report back to Mrs.

"Well you don't know my car, you dont drive it as much as me, as I drive it all the time I know there is something wrong"

Take it to a good indepedent garage up the road - nothing wrong with it.

This isn't the first time I have had this with the Mrs, seems to come up like every six months or so.

Anyway, chatting to the bloke at the garage and apparently his Mrs does exactly the same thing, he said he often takes into the garage, doesnt even look at it, takes it back and said he fully inspected it. And he said it's pretty common.

So I am wondering, any of you guys also have car paranoid wives or partners?
 
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I'm like that - I drive my vehicles so much I notice the early signs of something having seen better days and into the point of decline weeks or months before technically there is anything wrong with components. Get laughed at a fair bit for it but in the end I'm right.

Often though it isn't what you think for example with the Qashqai recently I could tell something was sloppy in the steering, though it felt like it was across the front, even though the garage was certain there was nothing wrong, eventually I was starting to get the nearside rear wheel kind of lock up/drag in hard left turns, again garage said everything was OK, then I started getting a knocking noise which was definitely coming from the nearside rear though occasionally getting a metal sliding against metal noise on the offside rear at which point the garage found the offside rear coil spring had snapped, after that was changed everything was back to 100% again - was 100% the coil spring on its way out even though a mechanic wouldn't find anything wrong with it and probably wouldn't even notice in a quick test drive (until it actually snapped) that was causing all that.

EDIT: I also had a look myself when I started getting the nearside rear wheel kind of dragging out of turns and definitely was no noticeable signs of suspension problems at that point but I could tell something was off when driving.
 
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Are the tyre pressures higher or lower than she's used to?

Yeah it can make quite a difference at this time of year especially if doing early starts or driving home late at night in the cold with the difference in pressure and tyre response, especially some budget tyres which are awful even at 10C never mind 7C or less.
 
I think my wife is deaf as she never heard any of the following on different cars.
Pulling onto the drive i hear the following - both separate incidencies and cars.
Grinding noise - turns out it was the water pump.
Hell of a squealing noise - brakes down to wear limiter metal thingy.

I drove her car on a return trip from the shops - what the hell is wrong with your clutch?
Nothing she said.
Booked it in the garage and the clutch plate was paper thin.


God help me if she does say her car is making a funny noise.
 
When I replaced the registration plates she said the rear car camera looked different. It was just the same as before. When we got out of the car she asked why the front registration plates were now white and not yellow as before.
Madness. She had the hump because I changed the plates without telling her.
 
No other half here (foreveralone.jpeg), but I'm similar.

Quite often I drive without music on, and I gradually convince myself that something is wrong even though there isn't anything wrong. It can have upsides though.

I was supposed to drive my dad's car for all of a mile a few months back and before I'd driven 200 yards I knew that his front left wheel bearing was completely knackered, in so much I refused to drive it any further. The next time I spoke to him in person he said he'd been trying to find what was making the noise for ages and had swapped various parts as he couldn't find any play in the bearing. Changed the bearing - whisper quiet. Now he always jokingly says that there's a new noise on the car and he wants to borrow my ears to find out what the problem is. This comes from a man who spent his late teens/early twenties replacing all sorts (inc. engine) on his original Mini and Ford Capri and has a lot more experience with cars than I do...
 
Another vote for checking the tyre pressures here.

SWMBO definitely feels the difference in her Mini if the tyre pressures are not perfect.
 
Opposite problem here, last time I was told "the car is making a bit of a noise" I found the pipe into the back box had completely rusted through to the point that the silencer was hanging off :rolleyes:
 
Lift the bonnet and bang a 17mm spanner off the engine block for 20 mins. Rub a bit of grease on your hands and forearms. Tell her you’ve realigned the parallel combobulators.

Sorted.
When I was growing up one of my neighbors, who knew nothing about cars decided he was a mechanic. I came home from school and he was hammering the engine, he said he was trying to fix it, good hour or so he was doing this.
Called him MC hammer from then on.
 
So the Mrs end of last week is claiming there is something wrong with her car.

"It's wollowing badly in corners, and making a knocking sound. Also the tracking is definitely off"

Take it for a test drive, seems fine to me, look at it under, wiggle the wheels around etc as best I can, cant see anything wrong with it.

Report back to Mrs.

"Well you don't know my car, you dont drive it as much as me, as I drive it all the time I know there is something wrong"

Take it to a good indepedent garage up the road - nothing wrong with it.

This isn't the first time I have had this with the Mrs, seems to come up like every six months or so.

Anyway, chatting to the bloke at the garage and apparently his Mrs does exactly the same thing, he said he often takes into the garage, doesnt even look at it, takes it back and said he fully inspected it. And he said it's pretty common.

So I am wondering, any of you guys also have car paranoid wives or partners?

I could have written that post TBH.

I'd be lying if I said I found this post surprising.

Do you all have the same wife…?
 
It's the opposite in my household - I happen to start our other car up at the end of last week (which I almost never drive) and instantly hear what sounds like a really terminal knock - not a quiet knock, a very, very obvious one......ask the boss how long the car has been making this noise for only to receive a shrug of the shoulders.


Turns out after a bit of hastily carried out investigation to be a water pump pulley cover that had somehow managed to lose 2 of its 4 bolts and the remaining two only be finger tight so a simple, easy fix but I genuinely have no idea how she could have not noticed the racket it was making.
 
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