When she was a young woman, Annette Viljoen must have been quite pretty. However, 30 years in the teaching profession has reduced her face to a collection of assorted frowns. Her mind is still sharp and her body, well … that’s none of our business. Her voice has become so high-Mazda; pitched and strident that her pupils (and the whole town) refer to her as Blikskêr (tin snips).
Blikskêr was recently in the market for a reliable second-hand car and, with Hennie’s help, she bought a 2003 Mazda 323 1300 that was in good condition.
The other day, she paid us a visit to complain about a vibration coming from the front of the car. Hennie called Japie to jack up the car and put it on stands, but he was nowhere to be seen. Syd laughingly told Hennie that, the moment Japie heard Blikskêr’s voice, he took off like a Jack Russell Terrier scooting after a rat. Apparently, Japie’s still scared of her after the two long years he spent under her tutelage.
Hennie conducted a quick search, dragged Japie out of the toilet and the investigation began while I entertained her with coffee and rusks. Hennie couldn’t find any obvious defects. The tyres were fairly new, but he took the car for a spin to check their balance and found a fleeting vibration of a kind he has never experienced before. He realised the tyres could not be blamed.
He soon noticed a slight judder as he accelerated in first and second and so, when he returned to the workshop, he examined the engine and gearbox mountings visually and by rocking the engine with a crowbar. The mountings appeared to be in a good condition.
By this time, Japie was also peering underneath the car.. He spotted a ring of lighte-rshaded coating around the longer of the two drive shafts and pointed it out to Hennie.
“That’s where a damping disc should have been,” said Hennie. “I wonder why it was removed.”
Could the absence of this disc have caused the vibration? He phoned CAR’s Jake Venter for advice and discovered the disc’s purpose was to dampen the torsional vibrations that might arise in a thin shaft during moments of high torque delivery. Without the disc, the shaft could easily go through a vibration period that would be noticeable to the driver.
I advised Blikskêr to drive the car at moderate speeds until we could find her another damper.
