So I haven’t talked about my recent car troubles yet. I mentioned earlier that my Chrysler smacked me in the head with flying plastic, but I didn’t mention a strange thing that had happened a few days before that. I was stuck in rush hour traffic, and I noticed that my temperature gauge had shot up to ‘hot’ and had a warning light on. I started frantically running through things in my head (will it make it home? should I pull over? etc.) while watching the gauge, whose warning light went off and the temperature reading dropped back to normal.
I figured it was a fluke, but kept on eye on that gauge over the following days.
Well, on Sunday, it did the same thing again. Since I was arriving at church, I shut the thing off and heard a disturbing gurgling noise coming from the coolant reservoir (which seemed to be filled). That cinched it—the car had to make a visit to my local Chrysler dealer.
My appointment was today and I just heard back from them (getting these kinds of things done is less of a rush nowadays since we can just use the other car). Apparently I had some kind of leak in my coolant housing and/or cap which are going to be replaced ($170), but they also found some other, unrelated problems. Things like a bad motor mount ($255) and a bad oil pressure sending unit ($105) which will also need to be replaced. That may fix some very minor weirdness I had attributed to age.
They also recommended some kind of fuel injector service ($135), but I’ll hold off on that for now because I have to look into whether I’ve already had that done at Jiffy Lube (I can’t remember, but I know I get a lot of the regular recommended maintenance done there).
Anyway, it’s been 8 months or so since it was in the shop last, and it’s only been three times in two and a half years (excluding regular maintenance, and two of those times were connected to one problem!). Needless to say, this Chrysler’s track record is still light years ahead of my last two cars. Both of those were Ford products (Mercury Sables); Fix Or Repair Daily wasn’t just a joke, it was a way of life.
Oh, and one other thing. Remember the visor clip that my car tried to beat me up with? It was only $14.