There had been a worrying time from day one of buying my Lada. The steering was faulty and from the feel of it a major cost to fix.
Every time a turn was made there was a big bump and the steering wheel just bumped and over-steered. This happened in both left and right directions but the main thing here was that the car still went left and right but suddenly! Added to this the steering was very stiff and Popeye styled workouts were had whenever the driving was made. It was especially hard in Yambol town where much steering and three point turns were needed.
Throughout the two years of owning the car this was something I put up and to me was part and parcel of the Lada drive. I even had other Bulgarian assessing the problem and the sharp intake of breath at the thought of the cost of repair always seemed to the assessed outcome. So it was left, as long as the car could steer that was the prime objective.
The last year or so both front types constantly leaked air. Every few day it was a trip to a garage to pump them up again. Getting he repaired was something that was always put off as it cost money. The tires had good tread and they worked, the air in the garages was free so it carried on. This is how it is in Bulgaria, any way to save money, it is works and is a little inconvenient to keep it working and doesn't cost anything that's how it is.
Finally it was time to get the tires seen to, initially with a view of repairing the existing tires as we had a little spare cash to see to this brought over from working in England. We estimated that this should only cost a maximum of 20 lev for both, but I knew at least one of the tires were beyond repair looking at the bulges on the tyre wall. This had been the state of the tires from day one but again it still rolled on regardless and got us places.
We looked at the cost of tires many times and that just the though of the cost put us off from doing anything about it, until Galia spotted some very cheap tires in a supermarket 70 lev each.
So one day we decided to check these out and looked at the tyre sizes we needed for the Lada. To do this we checked the existing tires sizes on the car and they were found to be 185 (whatever that meant.) The equivalent size was found in the supermarket each amounting to 75 lev. Before committing to buy them we thought we would check out whether they could be repaired.
