Alex's (18) car is almost as old as she is. It's a '92 Sunbird (a happening chick-magnet of a car if there ever was one). Not a lot of miles on it because it was owned for most of it's life by a little old lady (seriously). But it's a shining (rusting actually) example of why the Big Three Auto Makers seem to be self-imploding. It's a small car that can in no way compete with the small cars from Toyota and Honda. But it was inexpensive and we just needed it to get her through 4 years of college. 2 down and 2 to go. But...
2 weeks ago when we were loading up the Suburban to haul her stuff to college, one of the tires went flat. Not too big of a deal. I changed it and put on the borderline-useless donut-sized spare. Since it was the weekend we left the car at home and I would get it fixed during the week. The tire was pretty old so instead of having it repaired I had it replaced and we dropped the car of for Alex later that week.
Then the next weekend the red lemon (strange color for a lemon) started overheating and leaking coolant. It was too bad to drive down to our town and to our mechanic. So Alex took it a local gas station. They were very helpful and honest. It was only a gasket and thermostat plus some coolant and labor. Less than 60 bucks.
Two days after that the car would not start, the battery was deader than my love for The Donk. Again nothing major but it was the third issue in 10 days. At this rate we were looking at close to 100 repairs per year. This one I decided to just fix myself. I drove up there last Thursday at lunch time with a few of the little kids and I pulled the battery, got a new one at the auto-parts store and dropped in the new one. While I did this the little kids got to go see Alex's dorm room and see some of the campus.
They say things come in 3's so I'm assuming that this is it for awhile. Of course you know what happens when one assumes...
Don't buy one of these
1 comment:
That stinks! I hope that you are done fixing cars for a little bit. I guess the one positive is that you don't have a car payment.
I really should get my handy husband to do more car fixing, but that is one job he just doesn't want (or have time) to do.
My car cost me $432 this week. I thought I was just getting an oil change :0 ,but now I can open the hatch of my car (handle broke off) instead of having to climb through to the back (for groceries and swim equipment). On top of that I also had tires rotated and transmission fluids replaced.
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