because we went out to go skating and the car wouldn’t start. We already knew Jane’s car had a dead battery, because we’d tried to jump it a couple of weeks ago. Plus it has an air intake breakage.
Then we noticed the Forester tire is flat again. Sigh.
So we called AAA. But no, you have to call separately for separate cars even if they’re stuck in the same garage, and thus—TWO AAA trucks. Plus a wrecker, because while the Forester turned out to have a dying battery, cranking some 228 out of 600, which was WHY it failed to jump the Olds, Janes Olds not only had a flat battery, it has a dead alternator.
So the wrecker hauls Jane’s car off to a mechanic; I pay the guy for a new battery and now have a temporarily aired up tire; I go off to collect Jane; then we head for the tire dealership, but they swear they can fix it—it turns out to be an embedded screw. Well, I’d rather have new tires; but they say it should be ok. We’ll call them from the California desert and complain if not…
But it’s been a day. And we’ve already used up 2 of our 4 annual AAA calls and it’s only January.
It’s quite possible to get a good repair from a screw if it’s in the tread of the tire. As you probably know, older Subies (don’t know the vintage of yours) are sensitive to tire diameter differences (due to the AWD system), so it’s a good idea to replace all 4 at the same time (or make sure the circumference of the tires are within spec (several 32ths).
Good luck ! Car trouble stinks.
That’s kind of our problem. It’s a 2004 Forester. But replacing all tires is better than one; and the tire company seems to think it’s ok and we can get another year off the set. Which would be welcome—unless we have to phone them from the depths of the Mojave. The tire company is Les Schwab, one of the best in the NW: they do free repairs for the life of the tires, plus lend you free chains in the winter (a Subaru can’t use them, but it’s cool, nonetheless) and while I went in ready to buy a set of tires, they talked us into a fix, so it wasn’t profit motive. I tend to trust this company. I hope I’m not mistaken.
Mine got a screw in one tire shortly after I bought it, with similar problems (slow leakage0. I ended up taking it to Sears, and the repair lasted the life of the tire – it was part of the set replaced at 5 1/2 years.
Even so, with 75,000+ miles on those tires, I would have told the guy, “Either replace the entire set of tires, or I go somewhere where they’ll do what I ask them to do.”
My tires are now just past the 79,000 mile mark, which I hit yesterday afternoon coming home from platelet donation. I’m trying to squeak them a little further, especially since I have to get more heating oil.
Carolyn’s exaggerating again! They don’t have 75,000 on them, yet, tho they’re getting close. They’ve got lots of tread and have been nicely treated. And the Les Schwab guy would certainly have replaced them if we’d asked. I believe she also said something about driving ’20 miles’ on them while the tire was ‘flat.’ Another exaggeration (I love her dearly, but remember, she’s a professional liar! Anything for a good story! 😀 :D) Ten miles at the very most on a partially deflated rear tire with one person in the car shouldn’t do a whole lot of damage to a good tire. As for the Mojave…I’m more worried about the air conditioning. This car’s isn’t the best we’ve ever had. 🙁
Do, too. We changed dealer-special tires at 25,000 miles and got the all-weather Toyos. The car now has over 100,000 miles on it. I know we fly low, Jane-person, but we do touch the ground!
And the Mojave in February isn’t going to be THAT bad!
Just remember, CJ. “Death Valley” got its name in the winter, which ass the only season in which the pioneers would attempt to cross it. The Mo-jave is just around the corner from there… my old stomping grounds. Can you imagine doing the ol’ covered wagon routine in that segment of Hell? Yikes!
#
And Jane! “professional liar”??? ROFL. A bit harsh, eh? 😀 Do you guys watch ‘Castle’ on Mondays? If not, you should check it out. Nathan Fillion (from Firefly) is the lead, playing a murder-mystery novelist. Too funny. After his female co-lead (playing a GORgeeous female cop) bites hard on a story he’s spinning, he says “You bought that? Making things up is what I ***do***!”
argh! I meant to say IS in that first line, not the word for hinder-part. Snort.
We love Castle. Professional liars is our job description. 😉 And it does a pretty good job of ‘getting’ a writerly mindset. And how annoying we (the profession) are to live with.
I don’t have AAA experiences, but as the tax return time comes around I ALWAYS have some catastrophic car problem that takes all of my tax return money. 🙁 I am trying not to get excited about what I want to do with the money this year in preparation for the thingymabob in the car the is going to break. Yeah, all the parts I know the names for have already broken over the years and now we are moving on to made up car parts.
We tell ourselves, well, cars take x dollars per year to run, and while it’s just an isolated repair, and it’s age and wear, it’s ok. Jane’s 88 Olds Firenze has some issues, but outside of this alternator, which I think has been going wrong for a while, it’s been little stuff, except the airconditioner, which is not going to be in this year’s budget. It’s a nice-looking car: Jane repainted it dark sparkly berry-pie-filling color and took off all the dated trim; so it has a muscle-car shape and people can’t id what the heck it is. I think if she ever wants to sell the car she’ll get offers. It’s 22-23 years old, no rust, sound body, and makes an impressive sound, besides having that low sports-car config. 😉
Hey, you trying to sell my car? Give the guy a break. Wesley’s more than nice looking. He is a muscle car. Just ask him. He is a V-6 rather than a four-banger. If only he had a stick rather than that stupid automatic tranny…
I keep hoping that cool TV show that steals old cars and revamps them will come to Spokane and change his tranny….
besides, anything that’s wrong with him can be attributed to neglect. If we’d quit piling junk behind him in the garage and use him more, he’d be great. As for mileage…Tivo’s way beyond him now. :p
Wesley? As in, the Dread Pirate? Out of curiosity, do you pat it on the dash and tell it what a good car it is? Everyone thinks my family is insane, since we all pat our cars on the dash, especially in snowstorms and stuff. (“You can do it! You can do it! Gooooood car!!”)
Every time I think about canceling my AAA, I remember that my car is 11 years old, and now would not be the time to slack off on the AAA membership. Besides which, calling one number at 11pm in a snowstorm to jump the car when you’ve stupidly left the lights on (because the driver’s door was frozen and you had to crawl out the passenger side, which meant the car didn’t alert you to the fact your lights were still on) and having the tow truck arrive, literally, five minutes after you’ve called — it’s SOOOOOO worth it…
I hope you don’t have to call them again (it sounds like you should have reached your quota for car problems this year), but AAA is very nice about upping your membership if you have to call them a fifth time… experience talking…
Lol, no, the dread computer wiz Wesley (Jane’s Groundties)—
and we hope we are going to exit this with two functional cars. We think we’ve finally found a good mechanic.
Go to the Car Talk website and check there for recommendations on mechanics if you need to, it has worked very well for us. Check it out at http://www.cartalk.com . Recommendatiosn come from the customers.
In ‘2001 I was coming home with my mother after family Christmas in Houston, circling downtown Dallas on the elevated bypass when the car, a little Plymouth that I never liked that much, lost power. I had passed the high point, so I coasted down the right lane and down the first ramp to a Chico’s parking lot. Got a repairman to come out, who diagnosed a broken timing belt. He had already notified a tow guy in case I wanted him. Isabel was recovering from a stroke, and dealing with getting a motel room seemed beyond me; I paid $110 (seemed a lot then) to get towed 35 miles home.
After the repair, I remarked to Isabel that I guessed I had to expect about one major repair a year. She got this funny little grin and slurred out, “Not if you had a Toyota!”
Her Toyota was a ’91, and I’m still driving it. The ’92 Plymouth has been history for several years now.
I know those Dallas highways, and dead in the center lane at rush hour is not an enviable position. Having a gps is an asset, on those roads, but what a maze! And heaven help you if you have to maneuver with no power: to paraphrase Bill Cosby’s immortal words, they’d rather go over you than shift!
My favorite vehicle is my ’72 Dodge Powerwagon(I
was in the mountains)with a 318 for a motor. I
bought her(Sarah)off of 2 guys that had put 2 bias tires and 2 radials on opposite corners. She was next to impossible to drive so paid $500 and a hairy drive to Les Schwab’s got me a never say die,hard knock’n wonder truck. Yes I patted her dashboard and talked to her often.
ABC News did an expose a couple of years ago about tires sold as new, and which in fact had never been used and had great tread, but had been manufactured as much as 12 or more years prior. Apparently tires have a shelf life and when they get past a certain age, even if never used, the rubber shrinks and the entire tread can separate from the tire at highway speeds. Here’s the link if anyone is interested: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4826897.
Jane’s having to replace her rear tires: they got us up here in 2000, a 2000 mile trip; but the last 10 years have aged them. We’re pretty sure those tires are original, from 1988, so that would make them 22 years old. They have a certifiable split in them, and are unsafe at any speed. We got the front tires in 2000, so they should be in better shape.
Funny you mentioning the Mohave — we have to go thru it to get to my folks for Christmas and every time we do, all I can think about from Needles on is the Faded Sun. All those mountains are old, worn down to their bones, with all the valleys a gentle swale — no relief, no formations, just a salt pan at their lowest ebb. You feel the age and I find it daunting — how much time does it take to shred mountains down to their core and fill valley after valley to a level sameness? How about more Duncan? or Morgaine and Vanye?
We’re kind of looking forward to new things to see: we’ve driven the Spokane Dallas run so often—this will be new ground for both of us.
Is there some particular reason you want to go through the Mohave desert, instead of coming down the Inland Empire and the coast? I did a very rough Google map, and the distance and time seems to be about the same. There’d be more towns going the western route, which could be good or bad, since the eastern route seems to be very sparsely settled. But then, you may have an entirely different route planned.
Which is, by the way, another good reason to have AAA. I love their TripTiks. And the hotel discounts.
Well, we’re actually looking at picking up I-80…sigh. I’d like to go through the desert. And this after griping like crazy about my parents always choosing to vacation in the desert. (My hs senior year trip was Death Valley in August.) 😉 But I like funny rocks. I’ve wanted for years to go to Goblin basin, or whatever that place is in Utah that they used in Galaxy Quest. Mapquest wants us to go all the way from Spokane southeast to Boise and then down; I don’t think so: that’s over the lava flats and it’s a long, long drive we’ve done before. The program gets more reasonable if we ask it to leave from Kennewick, on the mid southern border; and I am checking the current weather reports to see what weather’s doing.
It’s an El Nino year and hwy 101 is likely to be
in bad shape or even closed in sections. The cliffs above the ocean are being under cut(again)
I’d stay off the coast this year. My folks live
there and all that rain has made a mess of So.Cal.
Sounds good: we’re going to come back via San Fran (one of Jane’s brothers) and then back the way we came down, well inland, if the way down was good.
I have a 4 wheel drive RED Toyota 4 Runner which ! call ‘Red Bunny’ because it keeps going and going and going…..and yes I even made a Red Bunny whistle to stay on the dash…:lol:
Winter is back…..wind chill of zero….colder tonight……..brrrrr!
I love red cars. We got a silver one for a change, and I wish it were red.
We get frozen at night, but it’s getting into the 40’s during the day. Oklahoma, however, got snow, apparently. We get ‘used’ Hawaiian weather up here in the NW during an el Nino year: it slants over toward us, goes upward, and we get unseasonably warm. It rains rather than snows. On a la Nina year the predominant winter weather comes down off the northern oceans. Which is what hit us last year, when building roofs were collapsing.
We’re socked in down here for the duration … ice with snow on top in Tulsa. So far, still got power, and DH is outside trying to get over an inch of ice off his windshield.
You do seem to live with the extremes of weather….last year Spokane was making our news.
Does anyone else find that Mapquest gives some very *strange* directions? Yesterday I had to go to a part of the state I don’t know (yes even in RI it happens)….took me over all sorts of back roads….crossed a route I do know and realized I could have saved miles and time by consulting a street guide…not the first time it has happened. 😉 !!!
Google can be a little strange, too. Great little Cuban/Continental/Spanish (not Mexican)/Cajun restaurant at Glassell and Chapman in Orange (city). So Google puts us on the freeway paralleling Chapman, and tells us to exit not at Glassell, but one street before Glassell, turn left, turn right, go down to Glassell, and turn left. Which puts us right where we’d be if we just exited at Glassell and turned left. What? They have an advertiser they want me to drive by?
I’ve lived here almost since my namesake built the people trap run by his mouse, so I blew off the Google directions and just went. My passenger/navigator was upset that I didn’t Follow The Instructions. Likewise when I parked in front of the restaurant instead The Instructed Parking Lot. Well, a little wine cured the upset.
Sometimes their strange directions make sense (you find out it’s a divided lane, so you can’t make a left, for example). But I like to see how they want me to go, and then enlarge the map and just give a glance over the route to see if they make sense in the big picture. Sometimes I realize that I can go a different way, which may be a little longer or shorter. The real difficulty is traffic. For example, if I am going to the south side of Los Angeles, I can take either the 5 or the 405. Which one makes the most sense depends a lot on the time of day and construction, since both of those variables can really tie up traffic. That’s when I go find my friends who live down that way and ask them which one I should take.