Death of the Crime Car?
Oct. 12th, 2004 12:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2So. I got up Sunday and watched the first half of the Seahawks game. They were ahead 24-7 at halftime. Things looked good.
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jeffreycornish called. Actually he called twice, but the second time he remembered that he wanted to go see Spiderman 2 at that cheap theater near his house. So I did a load of laundry, put it in the dryer, took a shower, and headed over to his place. We took my car to the theater.
The movie was very, very well done. It's funny how for so many years Marvel had trouble getting anything made movie-wise based on their comics that wasn't complete crap, and now suddenly you have the two X-Men movies and the two Spiderman movies, which together are some of the best superhero movies ever released.
Anyway, when we left the theater, my car refused to start. We tried to jump it. Jeff called AAA, andgeojlc, and dehd who reccomended a shop up on 175th, North End Auto I think the name was. The tow truck guy was absolutely convinced that he could jump us with his more powerful battery, but no.
I was hoping the starter was dead... in fact, it no doubt is. But I'm fairly certain that the reason it's dead is because the engine has siezed up. It was low on oil. I only know this because I checked... I had not been given any warning lights, and it had only been 3,000 miles since my last oil change, but I knew that it tended to lose oil quickly and I also knew that it could run so low that the engine would sieze up without actually warning you that the oil was low, because that happened to me five years ago. So I should have been checking the oil level more closely.
Basically, if the oil light ever comes on, it doesn't mean your oil is low, it means your engine is nearly bone-dry. Not what I'd consider a good design feature.
The shop called yesterday morning, and they'd tried to hand-crank the car, which didn't work. They said they were going to take a closer look to make sure, but they haven't called me back since. But they agreed that it looked like the engine had probably siezed up. I'm fairly certain that's the answer.
In any case, my car has been through one collision, one engine replacement, I've had the alternater die on me on the freeway at 1 am in the morning, I tore up the passenger side, I rear-ended another car at maybe ten miles an hour, which left just a little damage, it was stolen and used in a kidnapping and attempted murder, of course, after which my cd-player was replaced by one that is much cheaper and fails to play half the cds I put into it, and the broken seat was not replace but "fixed" by Saturn of Lynnwood, only it wasn't fixed and remained broken afterwards, and I had not gotten around to getting a new one, and the air conditioner needed to be recharged but I've never gotten around to fixing that... and the back tires had slow leaks that I had to watch and refill them about once a month or so.
In other words, my car has 150,000 miles on it. That's actually more miles than my Subaru or my Honda Civic ever reached. The first engine lasted about 70,000 miles, the second one about 80,000. It's probably time for a new car. I was hoping to not face getting a new car for another year or three, but I knew my car was getting very old. And I'm probably in a better position for buying a new car than at any other time when I've faced having to do so. I mean, when the first engine died I had been unemployed for five months. I was only able to buy a new engine by driving up the debt on two credit cards, which took me a long time to pay off.
When I said at work that my car was dead, Roxanne asked me if I was talking about "the crime car". :D
So... not sure what I want to do. Buy a used Honda, Toyota, Saturn? Buy a new Saturn? I've never bought a new car, but there are a lot of advantages to doing so. I know I want another semi-sporty, manual transmission, non-truck non-4wd, good-gas-mileage, dependable car of some sort.
Well anyway, Jeff and Jeri-Lynn were very kind and I'm currently driving her Hyundai, which she rarely needs. I was expecting to hear from North End Auto by now, but I pretty much know what the answer will be. I'll have to pay them for their work, find a way to get rid of my dead car, and then go looking for a new one.
jeffreycornish called. Actually he called twice, but the second time he remembered that he wanted to go see Spiderman 2 at that cheap theater near his house. So I did a load of laundry, put it in the dryer, took a shower, and headed over to his place. We took my car to the theater.The movie was very, very well done. It's funny how for so many years Marvel had trouble getting anything made movie-wise based on their comics that wasn't complete crap, and now suddenly you have the two X-Men movies and the two Spiderman movies, which together are some of the best superhero movies ever released.
Anyway, when we left the theater, my car refused to start. We tried to jump it. Jeff called AAA, and
geojlc, and dehd who reccomended a shop up on 175th, North End Auto I think the name was. The tow truck guy was absolutely convinced that he could jump us with his more powerful battery, but no.I was hoping the starter was dead... in fact, it no doubt is. But I'm fairly certain that the reason it's dead is because the engine has siezed up. It was low on oil. I only know this because I checked... I had not been given any warning lights, and it had only been 3,000 miles since my last oil change, but I knew that it tended to lose oil quickly and I also knew that it could run so low that the engine would sieze up without actually warning you that the oil was low, because that happened to me five years ago. So I should have been checking the oil level more closely.
Basically, if the oil light ever comes on, it doesn't mean your oil is low, it means your engine is nearly bone-dry. Not what I'd consider a good design feature.
The shop called yesterday morning, and they'd tried to hand-crank the car, which didn't work. They said they were going to take a closer look to make sure, but they haven't called me back since. But they agreed that it looked like the engine had probably siezed up. I'm fairly certain that's the answer.
In any case, my car has been through one collision, one engine replacement, I've had the alternater die on me on the freeway at 1 am in the morning, I tore up the passenger side, I rear-ended another car at maybe ten miles an hour, which left just a little damage, it was stolen and used in a kidnapping and attempted murder, of course, after which my cd-player was replaced by one that is much cheaper and fails to play half the cds I put into it, and the broken seat was not replace but "fixed" by Saturn of Lynnwood, only it wasn't fixed and remained broken afterwards, and I had not gotten around to getting a new one, and the air conditioner needed to be recharged but I've never gotten around to fixing that... and the back tires had slow leaks that I had to watch and refill them about once a month or so.
In other words, my car has 150,000 miles on it. That's actually more miles than my Subaru or my Honda Civic ever reached. The first engine lasted about 70,000 miles, the second one about 80,000. It's probably time for a new car. I was hoping to not face getting a new car for another year or three, but I knew my car was getting very old. And I'm probably in a better position for buying a new car than at any other time when I've faced having to do so. I mean, when the first engine died I had been unemployed for five months. I was only able to buy a new engine by driving up the debt on two credit cards, which took me a long time to pay off.
When I said at work that my car was dead, Roxanne asked me if I was talking about "the crime car". :D
So... not sure what I want to do. Buy a used Honda, Toyota, Saturn? Buy a new Saturn? I've never bought a new car, but there are a lot of advantages to doing so. I know I want another semi-sporty, manual transmission, non-truck non-4wd, good-gas-mileage, dependable car of some sort.
Well anyway, Jeff and Jeri-Lynn were very kind and I'm currently driving her Hyundai, which she rarely needs. I was expecting to hear from North End Auto by now, but I pretty much know what the answer will be. I'll have to pay them for their work, find a way to get rid of my dead car, and then go looking for a new one.
