Our family doesn’t have good luck with cars. It seems as soon as we fix one thing, something else goes wrong.
Aaron took our little sedan to NYC a couple of years ago. I expressed worry that something bad would happen to it, parked in the big city. Sure enough, it came home with a big dent in the side from being parked on the street.
Whenever we take a car in for maintenance, they always find something major costly wrong with it. And then a month after all of the expensive work is performed, the check engine light nearly always comes on.
Our SUV got a chip in the windshield last year. We had the auto glass folks come out and patch it. Then a few months ago, the patch gave out and the windshield cracked all the way across. Hello, new windshield!
Late last year, we had a nail in a tire on the SUV. We took it in to get the nail removed and patched, only to find it was in the sidewall and couldn’t be patched. And oh yeah, two other tires have nails in the sidewall. And the fourth tire had a broken stem valve. So one nail somehow turned into four new tires.
Last week, I tried to drive to work in the sedan, only to hear something thumping. Stopped at a gas station and found one tire flat. I tried to put air in it, but could hear the air hissing back out. I filled it up enough to drive home and switch cars, cursing our continuing bad luck with cars.
This poor little car has 188K miles on it. It’s running on a frayed rubber band at this point. It officially has a Do Not Recesuitate order on it – comfort care only. But I need it to last a little longer until we can save up for a down payment on a new car, so I had to buy two new tires for it.
As I drove the car home after getting two new tires, I pulled into the driveway to see the SUV had a low tire. With a nail in it. Seriously?
And then the same day, while driving on the highway, a small rock jumped from a semi-truck, over the car in front of us, and chipped the new windshield of our SUV.
Maybe we need to move to a city with better public transportation? Because we clearly aren’t meant to have cars.
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Since my boyfriend is a mechanic, we’re always talking about people’s car problems. One thing I can say is that 99% of the time, the repair places lie to you about what is wrong with your car. His sister took her Jeep to get tires, and they said there was $3,000 worth of repairs. After my BF looked at it, he only found about $200 worth. Its always good to get a second opinion. My brother works construction and is always getting nails in tires or a chipped windshield, that’s something I don’t think anyone can control. But I hope you have better luck with your next car!