Rubbish Car!

On Monday we went to see “Prince of Persia” as a treat for my homecoming and because Devin loves the video game(s). While driving there, Devin said the shifter felt loose so I told him to stop playing with it. When we came back to our car after the movie, it would shift at all. Our shifter would roll completely around and not catch on anything. Shaft.

We called Karly, and luckily she was at the same mall. While she offered to call AAA, we realized that we could back our car out (it was stuck in 1st gear but gravity would roll it backward for us) and then slowly drive it over to the Sears Auto on the other side of the mall. So we told Karly not to worry about AAA.

We arrive at Sears only to find out that they do not do transmissions. Shaft! So we are stuck in their parking lot. Call Karly back, and she calls AAA back, and then she and her roommate Megan come and wait with us for the tow truck.

Tow truck arrives, and it takes our car like a mile up the road to a place the Sears guys recommended. We get there, and it’s closed. Well, it was 5pm and Memorial Day; so we leave the car there and call and leave a message for them.

The next morning, they call us back. Kenneth and Dana were kind enough to let us borrow one of their vehicles so we could make it into Provo. We hand over the keys, tell them what’s up, ask them to look at our AC that hasn’t been working since the winter, and to do a trip check/oil change.

Off we go shopping and wasting time. They don’t call us when they say they will. So we call them, and they tell us that they will call us when it’s done. During this time, we agree that if the car is going to cost more than $1500 to repair, we will just get a new car. Forever waiting, then we just head back over there.

Car is done, sort of. Good news: nothing wrong with the transmission or seriously wrong anywhere else in the car. Bad news: we need to have all of our liquids flushed and replaced, and they want to check the timing belt & water pump to make sure it’s not old and deteriorating. Blah. Oh, and because the timing belt & water pump are so hard to get to, even if they don’t have to be replaced it’s going to cost a chunk of change for the labor to look at them.

We left the car with them overnight and they redid all of the fluids but the Power Steering, which they said would be fine for awhile; did the oil change; rotated the tires; replaced the air filter; and replaced the pin that had fallen out of our shifter: all for around $572. Yikes! Well, still cheaper than a new car and now we’ll feel safer driving across the country.

P.S. For whatever reason, when we had the transmission worked on last year, they put the wrong kind of transmission oil in it. They put in truck grade oil. What the?