The Voodoo Thing
Mar. 2nd, 2008 12:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kiffieI'm gonna try to sum up all that's happened. It will probably be hilarious.
From the beginning:
As most of you know, Voodoo had been shuddering for a while. I didn't know what it was, but it wasn't affecting driving, so I let it be. One night, when me and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
random_redshirt were coming back from a movie, it got bad. Real bad. So bad, I wasn't sure we'd get home. But next morning, everything was fine, like it never happened.
I made an appointment with Broadstreet and took her in.
The place was swamped and the mechie couldn't do much that day, but he said that he could keep her overnight, drive her around when it was cold out and see if the bucking, shuddering motion came back. I made some mention about the gas pedal "pulsating", as this had been happening, was annoying, and I figured that if she was already in the shop for one thing, I might as well get that fixed, too. I hadn't really seen any connection between the two things. Mechie, however, immedietly made a face-- you all know it, because it's the one that car owners know means "expensive work ahead" and other mechies know as "formation of several ulcers ahead" --and went to find his jack.
Ten minutes later and I'm sitting on a $350 work job. Voodoo's front trans mount was cracked and needed to be replaced. This involved pulling all the car's guts out her tail-end and sorting through everything. The job was long, laborous, and a pain in the ass to do (for both the mechie AND the car! *rimshot*). Almost all of that cost was just time spent getting everything out of the way.
The secretary drives me home and I wait.
A few days later, I get a call. Mechie has news. It's not just the front mount that's cracked. It's ALL of them. The front one was evedently cracked in the accident. The force of getting hit probably drove the front part of the trans into the mount, shattering it. And then the kicking motion that the cracked front mount allowed had damaged the other mounts, flattening, and eventually cracking, them into oblivion. The price of repair got upped to $750.
There was a good side and a bad side to this: The good - the insurance company had sent off a check to cover the cost of repair to the trans, which they estimated at about $2,500. Now, we figured we'd probably be held to pay any remainder back to them, but at least we knew we'd have our asses covered in case anything else was discovered. And now the bad - in pulling the engine and the trans out, mechie discovered three wondrous things: the clutch plate was cracked (from the bucking trans), the oil cooler was leaking (probably from the same), and Voodoo's previous owner had fitted her with some engine mods that had fucked with her internal workings enough to be a driving hazard. Yay.
By now, she'd been in the shop a while. The costs were racking up, I was getting annoyed at not having a car-- Archie is nice, but he's not motorized --and, on top of it all, it was raining and the bloody rear window LEAKS. I think I had the most hilarious panic attack EVER at 3am as I heard rain, realized what it meant, and then thought Voodoo, being at Broadstreet, was parked outside and would be flooded by morning. Blessedly, the mechie was smart and had parked her inside the garage next to that poor, bastard Ford Probe. So I figured, what the hell. She's in the shop already, I might as well get the window fixed. It WAS knocked out of joint in the accident, so the insurance won't mind if I include this on there as well. After all, I might not ever have the chance to get it fixed again.
Ugh. Smart one, Kiff.
The glass guy, who the mechies need to pull and place the window, showed up once in the last week. He came in to pull the window and was scheduled again to come on Wednesday to place it back in. He didn't show up. Okay, the mechie tells me, he'll be here Friday. He has to be. I wait by the phone. Nothing.
The mechie hadn't wanted to place the engine back in until the window had been set, as it's easier to move the car without the added weight and position it for window-related stuffs. But as the window guy was MIA, mechie went ahead and placed the engine back in, fired it up...
And was promptly treated to a gasoline shower.
The fuel pump, probably just as old as the engine, had taken some offence to being jostled around during the engine removal and disassembly and had more or less said, "Fuck it, I'm out." By this point, both the mechie and I had been well on our way to ulcers that may require hospitalization. This pretty much pushed it over the line.
After a brief (and rather hilariously strained) convo with the mechie over the phone, the grand total of damn near everything came out somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,500. That's not including any work that he'll have to do on the horn once he realizes that, in you replace the fuse that is MISSING FOR A VERY GOOD REASON, Voodoo doesn't stop screaming. On the one hand, I feel pity and a certain kinship in having both having experienced this bout of WTFery together. On the other... no. He knew what he was getting into.
That's pretty much where I am right now. Window guy should be here Monday, but there's no saying for sure. And the insurance company is probably gonna drop me after this. But at least Voodoo will be fixed. I hope. (._.)
From the beginning:
As most of you know, Voodoo had been shuddering for a while. I didn't know what it was, but it wasn't affecting driving, so I let it be. One night, when me and
random_redshirt were coming back from a movie, it got bad. Real bad. So bad, I wasn't sure we'd get home. But next morning, everything was fine, like it never happened.I made an appointment with Broadstreet and took her in.
The place was swamped and the mechie couldn't do much that day, but he said that he could keep her overnight, drive her around when it was cold out and see if the bucking, shuddering motion came back. I made some mention about the gas pedal "pulsating", as this had been happening, was annoying, and I figured that if she was already in the shop for one thing, I might as well get that fixed, too. I hadn't really seen any connection between the two things. Mechie, however, immedietly made a face-- you all know it, because it's the one that car owners know means "expensive work ahead" and other mechies know as "formation of several ulcers ahead" --and went to find his jack.
Ten minutes later and I'm sitting on a $350 work job. Voodoo's front trans mount was cracked and needed to be replaced. This involved pulling all the car's guts out her tail-end and sorting through everything. The job was long, laborous, and a pain in the ass to do (for both the mechie AND the car! *rimshot*). Almost all of that cost was just time spent getting everything out of the way.
The secretary drives me home and I wait.
A few days later, I get a call. Mechie has news. It's not just the front mount that's cracked. It's ALL of them. The front one was evedently cracked in the accident. The force of getting hit probably drove the front part of the trans into the mount, shattering it. And then the kicking motion that the cracked front mount allowed had damaged the other mounts, flattening, and eventually cracking, them into oblivion. The price of repair got upped to $750.
There was a good side and a bad side to this: The good - the insurance company had sent off a check to cover the cost of repair to the trans, which they estimated at about $2,500. Now, we figured we'd probably be held to pay any remainder back to them, but at least we knew we'd have our asses covered in case anything else was discovered. And now the bad - in pulling the engine and the trans out, mechie discovered three wondrous things: the clutch plate was cracked (from the bucking trans), the oil cooler was leaking (probably from the same), and Voodoo's previous owner had fitted her with some engine mods that had fucked with her internal workings enough to be a driving hazard. Yay.
By now, she'd been in the shop a while. The costs were racking up, I was getting annoyed at not having a car-- Archie is nice, but he's not motorized --and, on top of it all, it was raining and the bloody rear window LEAKS. I think I had the most hilarious panic attack EVER at 3am as I heard rain, realized what it meant, and then thought Voodoo, being at Broadstreet, was parked outside and would be flooded by morning. Blessedly, the mechie was smart and had parked her inside the garage next to that poor, bastard Ford Probe. So I figured, what the hell. She's in the shop already, I might as well get the window fixed. It WAS knocked out of joint in the accident, so the insurance won't mind if I include this on there as well. After all, I might not ever have the chance to get it fixed again.
Ugh. Smart one, Kiff.
The glass guy, who the mechies need to pull and place the window, showed up once in the last week. He came in to pull the window and was scheduled again to come on Wednesday to place it back in. He didn't show up. Okay, the mechie tells me, he'll be here Friday. He has to be. I wait by the phone. Nothing.
The mechie hadn't wanted to place the engine back in until the window had been set, as it's easier to move the car without the added weight and position it for window-related stuffs. But as the window guy was MIA, mechie went ahead and placed the engine back in, fired it up...
And was promptly treated to a gasoline shower.
The fuel pump, probably just as old as the engine, had taken some offence to being jostled around during the engine removal and disassembly and had more or less said, "Fuck it, I'm out." By this point, both the mechie and I had been well on our way to ulcers that may require hospitalization. This pretty much pushed it over the line.
After a brief (and rather hilariously strained) convo with the mechie over the phone, the grand total of damn near everything came out somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,500. That's not including any work that he'll have to do on the horn once he realizes that, in you replace the fuse that is MISSING FOR A VERY GOOD REASON, Voodoo doesn't stop screaming. On the one hand, I feel pity and a certain kinship in having both having experienced this bout of WTFery together. On the other... no. He knew what he was getting into.
That's pretty much where I am right now. Window guy should be here Monday, but there's no saying for sure. And the insurance company is probably gonna drop me after this. But at least Voodoo will be fixed. I hope. (._.)
