edit: the embeds weren’t working because of me! fixed now

Imagine you were in my weirdly dirty shoes, driving along a back road somewhere between 30 to 35 miles per hour, behind a pickup truck. Oh no, tragedy strikes!

“TINK TINK TINK TINK TINK”

Damn. You just got this car, too!

Alright, now back to my perspective. First of all, out of all the times for my car to start making this noise, it had to be when I was driving like a civilized human being?! I knew it wasn’t the engine, I knew it wasn’t the transmission. The “tink” was coming from the rear. I pull off on the side of the road and get my body as low as possible to the ground and poke around. Brakes look fine, axles look and feel fine, suspension looks fine. Nothing’s wrapped around anything and slapping a piece of metal. Damn.

Fast forward to a handful of yards down the road in a parking lot, still "tink"ing when it rolls. Tink going forward, tink and a little clunk going in reverse. It’s gotta be the differential. I’ve lost all hope, so I start calling a local dealership for the closest date I can bring in my car to get it looked at by a real mechanic. Nothing available today. After some more “close” inspection, I eventually accepted defeat and drove (very slowly) back home.

After the heart wrenching (and tink-y, but thankfully short) drive back home I realized I can easily check my rear differential by jacking up the rear of the car and spinning the wheels by hand. I do just that, and it spins freely with no “tink”. What?

Wait, what’s that?

Oh. There looks to be some sort of nail. What’s that saying? Can’t see the forest for the trees? What a fool can’t see he can’t believe? I’m not sure.

Keep in mind, the sound it made was LOUD. Like, someone hitting a wood spoon onto a pot lid, LOUD. I’m not sure if “tink” is really the right word, but I’m rolling with it. I assumed it was mechanical, because when a car makes a sound like this you automatically think worst case scenario.

By this time, I had called my brother in law to help. He had a theory: what if that “nail” was long enough that when it had the weight of the car on it, it would hit the inside of the wheel?

That very well could be the case.

Luckily, the penetration could not have been in a better place to be plugged! (Mostly because I don’t want to replace all 4 tires at the same time just yet!)

I drove (still, slowly) to a tire shop a couple of miles down the road. I wasn’t entirely convinced this would fix the main problem, but it needed to be removed anyways.

I wait in the lobby for who knows how long. Eventually, one of the shop guys comes into the lobby and drops a piece of metal on his desk.

Holy shit. That’ll do it! That pin is almost 5 inches long, about twice as long as I have sidewall on my tires! It absolutely solved the tink problem 😉

Moral of the story: if your car sounds like it’s hitting a wooden spoon on a pot lid, double check and make sure you didn’t run over a metal rod longer than your wheel is thick before looking for mechanical issues!

And that’s my first experience with driving over nails (or other pins and metal pieces) in over 4 years of driving! I hope my little story was fun to read, and I hope you immediately realized it was something in the tire unlike me over the course of several hours!