Guilty to all of the above and many more. Have been known to take a couple of seed pods from plants I've seen in shopping center medians or the parks. I just figured I had RESCUED a few seeds that needed to be transplanted somewhere else. (Like my place) LOL I have even dug tulips up that were in a bar ditch. They are the ones that multiply like crazy and come back year after year. There use to be an old farm house there and now it's just an empty pasture and the tulips take up about 5 acres. Of course when the maintainers (big heavy road equipmnet) come in and grade the road several times a year they throw a ton of dirt on them. They are at least a ft deep in dirt on the side of the road now. I really should go dig some again next spring so I can have some at this house. LOL I've also called real estate people and ask if I can harvest seeds from houses I see for sale or rent that might have a flower or something I'm interested in. LOL Yelp, we're all addicts but I'd rather be a flower/garden/plant addict than any other kind. However when your not working and can't even afford to send postage to others for plant swaps it's not good. You suffer from empty mailbox syndrome. Happy Gardening all you Addicts and Enablers! Love Marian

Thanks for the response. Are you talking about the "Timing Belt" - which is the belt that you cannot see. Or are you talking about the Air Conditioner and Alternator Belts, which are the ones you can see. If you are talking about the Timing Belt, do we have to take out all the parts again, to readjust the tension? THANKS

Patricia, you say your boyfriend gave you the car? I'm assuming that was before you broke up. Is that correct? You don't think he could have done something like switch the wires on the cruise control where it is always on, do you? Don't mean to scare you but so many people are nutz today anything is possible. Anyway. what you are talking about here is an emergency situation that has to be check out by a mechanic. What I can tell you to do is to see if the cruise control is inadvertently on, as was the case of my mother's car. If that isn't the case you must bring your car in to the shop. And don't be pessimistic. It could be something simple and an easy fix. But you won't know unless you go. Besides, no mechanic is going to start any work unless you approve it. If you can't afford it maybe consider selling the car to someone who can fix it and buying something else. But whatever you do, the last thing you should be doing is driving a car you can't control with you and your children in it. BTW- do you have an honest mechanic you can take it to?

It seems plausible to suspect sabatage, but there are other possible causes: The wheel, nuts applied backward (upside-down), acorn nuts, and improper nuts. The holes in the wheel could be worn out. Note that the holes in the wheel have cone shaped shoulders to match the cone shaped nose of the lug nuts. What is supposed to happen on tightening is the nut contacts the wheel before the nut the nut goes all the way down to end of thread or contact with the lug plate. Upon further tightening, the wheel flexes a bit (acting like a big, stiff spring washer, and the nut should go tight before the nose of the nut contacts the back plate or runs out of threads. What can happen is that someone gets too agressive with the impact wrench and stretches the metal around the holes in the wheels, especially when the hardness and strenght of the wheel is much less than that of the nut. Thereafter, the wheel can not be properly tightened because the nut runs out of thread or bottoms out before becoming tight enough against the cone shaped hole in the wheel. If these were used wheels purchased to dress up the vehicle, those may have had worn out holes, or had been flattened such that no spring action remained. Lug nuts have a tapered nose on one end. If these are the common variety of lug nuts with threads all the way through, the other end of the nut is flat. It is possible to put these on backward with the flat side toward the wheel, thus negating the locking feature. Nuts so applied are in danger of loosening. The tapered end of the nut goes against the tapered shoulder of the hole in the wheel. A third potential problem comes with acorn nuts, the type that has a closed end. These look great, but these must fit the wheel and lug combination. The nut must tighten againt the shoulder of the tapered hole before running out of threads. It is obvious by now that a common machine nut is a mis-application. If the nuts are flat on both sides, these are totally wrong. Back in the 'good ole days' it was thought that loosing a lug nut was more common on left wheels than the right when all nuts and studs used right-hand threads. This harks all the way back to horse drawn wagons and buggies where the wheels were held on with a single, large, square nuts. These nuts were not put on very tight, some not much more than hand tight. The nuts on the left side had left hand threads and the right side had right hand nuts. Forward motion of the wagon or buggy tended to tighten the nuts when the wheel thrust against a nut. All went well so long as the motion was always forward. It was possible to back a nut off if a wagon was moved backward for several rotations of the wheel, but this seldom happened with experienced wagoneers since they were aware of the problem. The driver did not want the nuts to be too tight because periodically, he needed to grease the simple axle bearing. To do this, he backed the nut almost all the way off, yanked the wheel outward to expose part of the spindle, apply a dollop of grease, pushed the wheel back and snugged the nut. If the nut was too tight, the driver might not be able to loosen the nut with the rudimentary wrench carried on the wagon. So much for history. Many cars up into the 1950s had left hand threads on lug nuts and studs. Usually, the stud had the letter "L" stamped on the end of the stud. Most "grease monkeys" and "flat fixers" knew to look for the left-hand mark before applying the impact wrench. (Flats were common with inner tubes.) But in my lifetime, I did spot a couple of novices who did not know or understand about left hand threads. These guys would attempt to remove lug nuts with the air wrench set for L-H rotation, and when nothing moved, they'd jack up the torque until somehthing did move.