The dog bus had a rough day today ... the transmission went a little wacky on my way to Sanford. I was headed to York Manufacturing to do some werk and it decided that shifting randomly would be fun. Needless to say, I wasn't amused.
Thank the Lord that this was the one day I had an appointment in Sanford of all towns. Funny ... I didn't think I'd ever be thankful for being in Sanford :) Anyway, as most of you know, my dad works in Sanford. We had planned on meeting for lunch anyway, so after lunch we took the bus over to some shady lookin tranny shop to see if they could help. Well, they sent out a tech (also shaddy lookin) to werk on it right away. If they diagnosed it correctly, they'll replace the blah blah blah sensor (don't remember what it's called) and the dog bus will be able to race up and down the turnpike again very shortly. So, other than looking like a dive, they seemed VERY nice and were more than helpful.
It worked out really well because I didn't have to be back to VTEC until 5ish to teach a night class, so I was able to hang out with dad at CMP until he was done. Then, he took me home (his house) and let me take their Windstar. So of all the towns I've been to in the past two weeks (Bangor, Augusta, Westbrook, etc.) God saw to it that it broke today ... in Sanford. Now I'm just praying that it's just a sensor and not something much bigger.
Right, so what's YOUR car story? Ever been stranded because your car busted? What's the most miles you've ever put on a vehicle? What's the ugliest car you've ever owned? PLEASE!!! Post something so that jammin and graybeard will stop!!
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Are there any auto mechanics amongst us?
Posted by dbageek at 8:29 PM
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No joke, I had car trouble today as well! Remember the BK off of exit 7 in Dover? I had lunch there, but being senile, left my headlights on. I normally have a battery pack jumper cable thing in the van, but it was home. So, my father-in-law brought it to me, but it didn't work. Cheryl has my good jumpers in her car, so I said, "well, let's go to Walmart (which was nearby) and get a set of cables. We did, and THAT didn't work! So, pops called AAA, which he has, and 1/2 hour later a tow truck came out. I'm thinking at this point, great, big bucks now. He brings out a battery pack thing, hooks it up, and without giving it any time to sit and charge up, he asks me to try it. I get in, and the ^%$@ thing starts right up!! I was embarrassed, but very, very thankful. Turns out, since my f-i-l's car is brand spankin' new, some of the new cars don't take to jumper cables well, although we did have spark. And I don't think my pack was charged, even though the indicator said it "good". All this wasted almost three hours of my day! But, thank GOD, He made sure it was nothing I couldn't handle.
I've had many times of strandedness in the past, my Saab had 221,000 miles on it (An '88 900S), the Saab would have to be the ugliest car, too, although I loved that car, my '71 Skylark was my favorite car, I hated the Plymouth Horizon I had, and you can't get rid of us now! BWAH, HAW, HAW!
I had a little red 1991 Isuzu truck the entire time in college, which was a long time, by the way. It had 200K+ when the transmission finally gave out. After that I graduated to a 1994 Chevrolet Corsica with 120K on it when I got it. I finally bought my first new car last January. Haven't worried about breaking down since. It's a nice feeling.
My ugliest car was a 79 Brown Buick Le Sabre. It was a boat. I don't remember how many miles it had but Brian bought it for me when we were in Texas in 1994 for a whole $900 bucks. However, after living in Texas for a year with two babies and only one car for Brian to go to work in, I was thrilled. To celebrate, Nicole, a friend of mine down there, and I went to Grandy's for breakfast. I parked like an ol granny in that huge boat LOL :)
Hmmm...Let's seeeee.... a '67 Mustang ragtop, a '67 firebird ragtop, a '88 Pontiac Bonneville SSE in '92, a black '96 Jeep grand cherokee, a '96 Ford explorer, Both in 2000. The wifey's '96 Olds cutlass ciera might be a good choice. Um....Or maybe the '84 Ford Taurus that I bought for her to go back and forth to school with.....or my '84 chevy cavalier when I started traveling on the road (only kept that one for 4 months before getting the bonneville. Or maybe it was the '84 chevy s-10 or the '88 ford ranger that I kept for about a year.... or what about the '96 Ford pickup that I bought for $7k in 2000 and traded in 2001 (they gave me $10k for it, couldn't pass up that deal) toward my current 2000 F-150. Can't forget about wifey's '97 Dodge Caravan that she's driving right now.....All I know is that I hated all that driving cross-country with that 4-cylinder cavalier, but I also hated banging my head everytime I put the kids in their car seats in that &*%#*!@ cutlass ciera. Needless to say I don't keep 'em long enough to rack up the miles.
Oh yeah, wifey just reminded me of the one breakdown that stands out in our minds. We were still dating, and I had the day off from work, so we decided to go to Vaughn Woods for a picnic, with the Firebird. We were coming from in town dover down the ramp off exit 8 when I downshifted into 3rd coming into heavy turnpike traffic. As I weaved my way into the outside passing lane, still in 3rd, I realized that the gas pedal seemed to be stuck half way to the floor. So as one should normally do in this situation, I punched it with my foot, hoping to cause it to release. It didn't, however. The next thing we new, we were fffllllyinggg down the turnpike in my baby, top down, pedal to the metal. There was so much traffic, and we were in the wrong lane (no break down lane) that I didn't want to just turn the key off for fear of losing my power steering and crashing. So, foolishly or not, I threw the clutch which made the car slow down while I weaved thru traffic to the break down lane. However the engine didn't slow down, and started smoking (later determined due to burning the belts off). Now that the car was stopped and we were relatively safe, I was worried about my baby burning before my very eyes. So I rushed to the hood and slowly popped it open and saw no fire. It was now that I realized that I should have shut the key off to make the engine stop racing, so I pulled a battery cable,.....!whew!....I dropped the cable to the side in relief, when all of a sudden, the cable touched the battery terminal and continued the car racing again (due to the fact that it hadn't shut completely off yet). A statey soon came along and parked his car a short ways behind mine with the nose of his cruiser in traffic. He said he would rather see the cruiser get hit than my car. I thought that was the right thing to do too. I had spun two bearings from the bottom half of the motor. In this situation, I should never have been able to move that car without throwing a rod through the side of the block. (they stopped making that engine in '67, not easy to find another block) But due to the fact that I had Slick 50 in the engine oil, I drove that car home from dover to lebanon, without damaging the engine any further. Later found out that an unused vacuum bracket had swung loose and jammed against the rod for the gas pedal.
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