Car Trouble

We seem to be plagued with car trouble lately. The week before we went to Florida I took my car into Goodyear for an oil change, a tire repair and a look over. They told me I would need new rear brakes soon. They knew I was going to Florida but didn’t say anything along the lines of GET THEM FIXED NOW. They also gave me a list of other things that needed to be done; new tires, air filter, fuel filter, etc. Total $100

Six days later, while we were on vacation, we knew something was wrong. We thought at first we had backed over a storm grate. A trip to Goodyear in Florida and a morning of vacation spent waiting for them to replace our rear brakes. They also gave us a list of other things that they recommended we fix. NOT ONE of the things on their list matched anything on the list from the Goodyear here. I guess I’m done with Goodyear. Total $400.

The Monday after we got home, seven days after having the Buick worked on, F’s front tire blew just up the road. He put the donut on and headed home. He called around and made arrangements to get a new set the next day. $250. They changed them and he got a mile down the road and the BRAND NEW tire blew! He changed the tire again and headed back. They pulled the tire and said “Gee, I guess we should have noticed you had a bad spring/strut assembly.” He called me to come get him. They said they could have it done that day. Then they called and said that if we really needed to do both sides. $560. Meanwhile one of my tires looked a LITTLE soft so I put air in on my way to work because the compressor was in F’s car. By the time I got home the weather had gotten rotten and since they weren’t done with his car we decided to pick it up the next day.

That was a MISTAKE! It snowed pretty good overnight so F went out to snowblow the driveway. When he got to the garage my tire was totally FLAT. He changed a third tire in a 36 hour period! We don’t have any electric to our garage so he had to do it by flashlight. I drove to work on the donut and then over to trade my car for his at the garage. Turned out that I had a nail and they were able to fix it but pointed out that it was worn to the point of almost being illegal.

On the following Thursday, PJ hit a deer. Over a week later he’s still waiting to see if the insurance company is going to total it out or fix it.

This past Tuesday, BJ’s battery died in the truck. F went over and helped him jump it and he went out and bought a new one. He also is having some kind of problem with the dashboard lights on the Honda.

Friday we took my car back and got a new set of tires because they were on sale. $270

If I did the math right that’s almost $1600 for F & I in car repairs. Hopefully we’re set for a long time. At least we'll be getting lots of points from the credit cards.