sailor blush (SSLR and additional rant ahead warning)
I just can't win.
SWMBO's car, a 98 Saturn SL2 has been misbehaving lately. The poor performance pointed to plugs being the basic thing to start with (an inexpensive - I can change them myself). WHen i wnet to change the plugs, I discovered the valve cover gasket was leaking. I replaced the gasket, replaced the plugs and test drove it around town. It ran beautifully. That was yesterday.
Today was our church's annual picnic at a park just outside of town. We took her car there, and other than a brief hiccup when I first started it, it ran beautifully. About 6:45, we piled in the card to come home. It briefly started, very rough running then quit. It refused to start after that. It cranks just fine, it just won't catch. It behaves like it is either not getting fuel or not getting spark. I called AAA and just got home about half an hour ago. They towed it home for me. Tomorrow, I will see if my regular mechanic can get it in. If he cannot, to the dealer it goes, because I know they have same day service. I don't want to do that, but this is beyond my diagnostic abilities.
To say I am unhappy would be a gross understatement. I am so mad right now, I could spit nails. We got rid of the albatross that was the apartments two months ago. I figured that once we paid off some things (the car loan being one of them), things would be pretty easy. We could focus on getting some things done around the house, put some money away for our trip to Disney next year, and not have to worry about things needing constant fixing, like the house next door did. Nope - can't have that. We sunk probably close to $3k into my van over the last two months (granted, we knew some of that was necessary), and now her car is misbehaving. It has been treated pretty good, and only has 111k miles on it. We should not be having problems like this. Oh, one other thing - I noticed there is a tail light out on it as they were pulling it up on the rollback. I will NOT have the garage or Saturn dealer fix that - my mechanic is reasonably priced, but I can certainly change a light bulb.
</rant> |
