Posted on Mon Feb 11, 08:08 PM in Adventures in Automobiling
Getting screwed was not on my to-do list.
With the exception of having the snowstorm hit us last Wednesday, and having to deal with the subsequent cleanup, Thursday was going to be a productive day for me. I had a chiro appointment scheduled that morning. Since my chiro office is not in a part of town I frequent much, I decided to piggy-back a trip to a hardware store in the same area, a hardware store where all the stereotypes about old men knowing everything about everything is pretty much true. From there I was going to head over to the Mayfair Barnes and Noble, to pick up my mom’s birthday gift. And after that, I had planned to clean up the home office, wrap said presents, fill out forms for COBRA coverage, and make sure to call my car mechanic to schedule an oil change.
On my way back to the car from the mall, I saw that my passenger’s side rear tire was flat. Luckily, the SO was working from home, and was able to drive out his emergency car kit’s mini air compressor, which allowed me to fill the tire and drive it over to the car mechanic. Turns out I was going to call them sooner than I thought.
I called them preliminarily to let them know the situation, so when I dropped it off, I said, in addition to the oil change, could they please check and see why my brake light is on? It’s been on since Thanksgiving and there’s been no problem. They would do that and give me call when the car was ready. Thankfully, they are in the same neighborhood, so walking home took 15 minutes.
And then I got the call, which told me that a two-inch screw was removed from my tire and that it was repairable… and that there were a couple other things I should know about, exceeding the $100 estimate:
(whimper)
Over the history of my ownership of this car, I have to say that it goes through CV boots like they’re going out of style. I must have had that repair done 4 times in the 10 years I’ve owned it. That’s the one surprise out of the bunch that really has me puzzled (they described it as having been “ripped open”). On the good side, they first called me at 2:30pm, needing my approval to proceed, and actually got everything done before they closed at 5pm.
I fail at car.
Some cars go through CV boots quickly, due to the relative placement of certain engine parts. On my car, the passenger front CV boot has a tendency to crack, because the hot exhuast pipe runs near it and that dries and ages the plastic. Something similar may be occurring on your car if you have repeated boot problems.
Oh. I thought it was just my skillful driving.
Awesome! Now I can blame the man who designed it! Pud.