June 9, 2007
Hokulele
I love my car. She’s a 2003 Saturn L200 and she’s the first new car I’ve ever owned. Her name is Hokulele, Hawaiian for shooting star or meteor. I bought her after my first successful year of running a business. Previous to purchasing her I had owned a succession of junkers that sucked the money out of my bank account faster than I could pour it in. I bought the super-duper extended service warranty with her. For the first three years I was responsible only for gas, tires and wiper blades. I took her in every 3000 miles for an oil change and complete service without paying any additional fees, and Saturn even throws in a car wash when they have your car in for service. The only problem I’ve ever had was a clogged catalytic converter which caused me to stall on the freeway one day. That was the day that almost the entire city of Honolulu had a blackout, so the dealership service department couldn’t do the diagnotics they needed to do, but they ran them the first thing the next morning and had her back to me by noon. Unfortunately, when the warranty expired last August I was struggling financially and couldn’t renew. Still, I’ve taken her in to Goodyear for regular checkups and oil changes and she’s continued to give me a great ride and no trouble. Until this week. This week I started wishing I’d had access to a cash advance last August and had renewed the warranty.
I was late with my oil change and was seeing a check engine light on the dash, so I took her in on Wednesday for an oil change and to find out what the light meant. I also had a slow leak in one tire that had caused uneven wear, so I knew going in that I would probably have to buy two tires. They had 47,000 miles on them, so that was fine. The computer diagnotics to find out what was wrong with the engine cost $110. Okay, I need to know so I’ll pay that. And what did it discover? That I wasn’t tightening the gas cap enough and the fuel tank could not pressurize. Duh! I don’t remember ever knowing that that could be a problem. That $110 seemed like an expensive way to find out that I need to turn the gas cap until it cicks three times. Still, the tires I needed were on sale, so I expected to get out of there for maybe three hundred dollars. After Hokulele had her checkup I got the bad news. My brakes were with 1/32 of an inch of needing to be replaced. Un, oh yeah - I had heard a little squeak a couple of times recently, but no extended squealing, and the brakes were performing just fine. Still, safety first, so I told them to do what needed doing, without even asking the price. What’s another couple of hundred bucks when we’re talking safety? Um, yeah, little did I know! I walked out of there over $1400 poorer - but with new front and rear brakes.
On the way home my oil light came on. Oh, bother! Had they forgotten to tighten the drain plug? I pulled over and saw that I wasn’t dumping oil, so I finished driving home. When I got there I pulled out my paperwork to call Goodyear and discovered that … they had not changed the oil! Sheesh! Went back on Thursday and spent another $40.00 bucks and now Hokulele is happy and healthy again.
I suppose I should pull out my owner’s handbook and find out what else is supposed to wear out at around 50,000 miles, but, quite frankly, I don’t think I want to know. Maybe next week.
Technorati Tags: automobiles, automobile service, cars, Saturn, vehicle worship
Posted by skeet @ 10:55 pm • Society & culture
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June 10th, 2007 at 11:06 am, Mr. Fabulous Says:
I guess it surprises me you could put a lot of miles on a car while living on an island LOL
June 10th, 2007 at 12:15 pm, skeet Says:
Not hard to do since I work out of my car, Fab. I don’t have the luxury of a single trip each morning and evening. I go to several locations each workday and the miles do add up.