Everyone who has ever driven a car has had the experience where their car makes a weird sound. Some of them are instantly worrisome, and others are sort of a gnawing at the back of your mind. You know it's important, but not what made the sound. Sometimes that noise goes away by itself, which is your entry into a whole different class of horror. Nothing feels better than figuring out what that noise finally was, and taking care of it before something worse can happen, like it turning into a different racket.
Once, I had a really awful screeching noise. Got worse the faster I went, which is my usual instinct. Turned out to be a rock stuck between my brakes and the little dust shield there. Just a little pebble. By the time I got it out, the rock was perfectly smooth, exactly unlike my nerves. When that dust shield rusted to a pulp and disintegrated a few months later, I wasn't sorry to see it go. How dare you oppose me, flimsy piece of metal? You made me think that it was a real problem.
Similarly, I had a weird clunking noise. Kinda soft, and hard to hear unless you had the stereo off and the radio rolled all the way down. Ignored it for awhile, and went to the grocery store. Turns out my brake caliper was left loose by maybe-not-me after a bearing job, and I got to drive home with it bouncing around inside my wheel. A real problem, in other words, especially if you're one of the modern thinkers who believe "working brakes" are part of safe driving. Way more subtle noise, way bigger problem. Why? And more importantly, why not?
That's why I'm introducing a new piece of safety equipment: the Suspension Noise Enloudener. Your car already has a really great stereo, which can be cranked up to ignore the sound of anything falling off of it, but why can't we use it to make that weird sound louder, and clearer?
Thanks to an array of high-definition microphones stuck all over the bottom of your car (which must be replaced after every snowfall or dirt-road driving, or you'll get a check engine light) you'll know instantly and with great clarity what the exact piece disintegrating on your automobile is. That is, unless you usually listen to Nine Inch Nails, in which case you'll probably head into your mechanic and tell him to take a look at the brakes every time you hear Into The Void.
