HomeGrown scores FREE basketweaves....

..... with NEW tires.....still mounted on the FREE 1990 Camry wagon!!

A friend of mine at work was telling me about this '90 Camry wagon. It was just a spare car to him. He loaned it to another buddy who drove it a few days, and told him about this terrible noise coming from the front end. We talked about it, and it was presumed that it needed a new half-shaft. He didn't want to deal with it, so asked me if I wanted the car for free. Of course I did, especially after finding out it had basketweaves on it. I drove it about 8 miles home, with this gawd-awful noise from the driver's side front. Seemed to go away during braking and acceleration. The first order of business was removing the locking lug nuts, which he didn't have the special tool for (McGuard type). I hammered an appropriate sized socket onto them and they came off easily.
I remove the front tire, brake caliper, and rotor, only to find NOTHING that merits the kind of noise coming from the front.
Confused, I put things back together without the wheel locks. I put 2 of the shouldered lug nuts on it with their spacer/washers, and lightly snug them down. I grab the tire, and it's still loose. Then I realized that the lug nuts were bottoming out on the rotor. I put an extra spacer under each lug nut. I kick the rear wheel and it's loose also . The wheel lock was the only nut that was actually holding the wheel tight against the rotor & drum on the driver's side. The pass. side had the appropriate 2 spacers on the lug nuts. Evidently, the locking nut loosened up and let the wheel rattle. It all made perfect sense after I thought about it. Many tire places have 2 people working on a vehicle. The guy working on the passenger side was aware of the 2 spacers per nut, while the guy working on the driver's side was probably wondering where all the "extra" spacers came from.

Put the basketweaves with new Goodyear VIVA tires on my camry, and it drives really smooth. Didn't see any apparent damage to the wheels. The wagon is in overall pretty good condition, although it has 364k miles on it. Needless to say, it doesn't drive quite as tight as my camry with 55k on it. It's not bad though, doesn't smoke at all. Don't even get a puff of smoke on start-up. The wagon looked really great with those wheels on it. Now it's just sort of plain looking.

Told my buddy what was wrong with the car. I felt bad because he gave it to me based on the assumption that it needed a major repair and so I offered it back to him (minus the basketweaves, of course ), but he didn't want it.