G Algonquin Trips and Other Things: Damn car Algonquin canoe and portage trips

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Damn car


So it looks like I have a big repair bill coming to me for my car. Sheesh... just when things were lookin' better on the $$$ front too.

Damn car.

I'm sorry car, I love you... I didn't mean it.

It looks like there a transmission issue. I am embarrassed to say I believe this one is my fault, not mechanical failure... I'm just not ready to say what I did out loud and admit to it. I'll have to wait to hear back from the dealership on what the problem is. I know a lot of you are sayin' "you're crazy takin' it to the dealership!" but I assure you, I have found a gem of a dealership in a smaller town. They charge a fair rate and have never tried to talk me into unnecessary work. I usually do my own maintenance and have even changed my timing belt with the help of a few members of tdiclub.com lookin' over my shoulder. I just didn't feel comfortable with this one since I know zero about fixin' transmissions and I don't have a lot of time right now since I took a some freelance database work to help with the finances. I guess it's a good thing I took that work on now... only problem is I'll prolly end up spending all the money I make on the car repair (hopefully not more than I'm makin' 'cause that would suk).

Anyway, Jim and I are gettin' together this weekend to go over the final details of our Algonquin trip. As he mentioned in his latest post, we didn't get a room at the hotel in Mattawa 'cause they were all booked up... who'd o' thunk? We're stayin' at the same motel as last year where the owner had put in a sub shop and I'm happy to report that he has now expanded his culinary skill set to include a Chinese food buffet! Ya gotta wonder how he even had enough customers to make the sub place successful... I mean, Mattawa is a *very* small town and he's not even *in* Mattawa! Good for him though. We've secured ourselves a non-smoking room which, I suspect, will smell very much like a smoking room like our non-smoking room did last year. Oh well, beats sleepin' in the car I guess.

Well, I'm anxiously waiting to hear from the dealership but I also have work to do here at home (I'm glad I brought my laptop home last night, I almost left it at work for the night).

Have a great day everyone.

g.

5 comments:

gewilli said...

it better be the stealership that the other Gerry works at...

Suki said...

I'm happy to report that my car is in perfect working order.

awesome.

at least SOMETHING is.

Suds said...

Awww, Suki. I don't really know ya but I feel for ya. I wish there was something I could do or say to help but... (for those that know me this'll be a shocker) I'm at a loss for words...

Take care Suki.

g.

Suds said...

GeWilli,

No it's not the one that Dazzler works at... that's waaaay too far for me but it's just as good. I'm friends with the service manager so that really helps when it comes to gettin' the "behind the scenes" type of info on my car. They always give me wholesale pricing on parts and they often don't charge book rate for jobs, charging instead for the actual time when it's lower than book rate.

It looks like I'm gonna be facing a bill around $2600-$3000... not what I would've liked but hey, what can I do. $1300 of that is the transmission I picked up... it has 152,000km on it which is better than the 350,000km on mine. I've also decided to put in a new clutch and flywheel since they've already got it torn down... preventative maintenance... Anyway, I'm without the car until late next week since the transmission won't be in until Monday/Tuesday.

g.

Suds said...

Actually I mis-shifted got the revs up *real fast* and some pin rocketed through the casing.

Brain fart=$3000... damn that hurts.

The upside - my tranny had 350,000km, the new tranny has 152,000km. New clutch and flywheel and I should be good to go.

g.