WATERVILLE (AP) – Car mechanics are seeing an increase in business fixing cars that are damaged from all the potholes and heaves on beat-up Maine roads.

Tom Hachey of Arbo’s Towing and Repair Service said he’s been doing a lot of wheel alignments. Some cars are so out of alignment that they look as if they’ve been dropped off a cliff, he said.

“We’re also getting a lot of flat tires because people are hitting potholes and just blowing the tires off the rim,” he said.

The culprit is the excessive rain that Maine has received over the past month, said Aurele Gorneau, a region engineer for the Maine Department of Transportation.

The rainfall for many communities was double the average in April, according to the National Weather Service. Portland got 8.3 inches, the third wettest in 135 years, and Bangor received 6.19 inches, or double its monthly average.

Gorneau said the rain has damaged roads by washing away pavement or causing it to heave. Repairs have been hampered because the frequent rains haven’t allowed the asphalt patch jobs set long enough.

“The patching’s behind because so much effort is being put into fixing the flooding problems,” he said. “There’s been a lot of erosion, with shoulders and culverts washing out.”

Voit Ritch, the owner of Autowerkes in Gardiner, said he has replaced more ball joints, tie rods and other steering components, along with shocks and struts that have had seals blown out of them, in the past two years than any of the 20 years he’s been in business.

“These things are catastrophic failure compared to normal wear and tear,” Ritch said. “The damage is caused by a sharp impact due to the potholes and frost heaves and culverts coming up. People are dodging potholes and ending up on the shoulders, which haven’t been repaired since the washouts from all the rain we had.”

Karen Hazzard of Readfield blames potholes and road heaves for the $1,000 repair bill to replace the struts and tie rods on her Audi station wagon.

“These roads are horrible,” she said. “There are roads that are so hideous, like Route 135, that I would go miles and miles out of my way so I wouldn’t have to drive on them. That road looked like it had been bombed.”