Sunday, September 21, 2008

It's BACK!!!

After three weeks of no communication, a few false promises of getting it back, and coordinating work/school schedules... I have a car again. It looks almost brand new (from the front).

They ended up replacing the hood and the windshield. They fixed a bunch of dents on the roof that were caused by the hood flying up and hitting it. They repainted the hood and the roof. They matched it perfectly. I had a picture in my head of the hood being a different color then my car and the roof faded to gray. I was expecting the worst. Luckily, that wasn't the case. As an added bonus, they fixed some random plastic piece in my car that had been hanging down in front of the passenger seat for the last three years.

A special thanks go out to Richie & Angie for helping us out by giving me rides and loaning us your car! You guys are the best!!
Before
After

Just one problem... Now it's not starting right... anyone know how to get rid of a bad car curse?

Friday, September 5, 2008

Will it Ever End?

I am so frustrated. I'm so angry I just can't help but cry. I really want to punch something or throw something, but that would hurt me or something else. I am so sick of car problems. I honestly didn't think so many things could go wrong with cars in such a short period of time.
Around 4 weeks ago, Ryan's truck started having a hard time shifting and getting into gear. We took it in to get it checked out and after a few separate trips of it not performing right and more money then we had hoped, it got fixed. Perfect. It ran like a champ. We went on with our lives as usual. Car problems randomly happen, right? Not so much...
Two weeks ago, on Ryan's first day of school, he got into a fender bender. He was stopped at a red light and felt a big bump from behind. It turns out that some lady, who claims she doesn't know what happened, rammed into the guy behind Ryan, who rammed into our little truck. Luckily, no one was hurt, but the truck's bumper got pushed down. Thank goodness this lady had insurance and we don't have to pay for the repairs.
This was taken before the accident
At the beginning of this week, Ryan was using my car to transport family to the airport-all the way across town. All of a sudden, my car started making noises and smelling like something was burning. Ryan and our brother-in-law Troy figured it was the air conditioning. They turned off the air and it ran well after that. Pretty much, my air conditioning (which was fixed in July) blew out on them. Bye bye air conditioning.

Later the same day, I was driving home for lunch. I was going about 50-55 mph on one of the main roads here in town. I was only driving for a few minutes when the hood of my car popped open and flew back into my windshield. It made the loudest noise and scared me to death. I pulled over as quickly and as safely as possible. I was lucky enough to not have any cars around me when this happened. We had to tow my car down to an autobody shop and it will be there until next friday at the earliest.

This is the best shot. You can see the shattered windshield and the hood of my car all bent up
Now for the kicker... Last night Ryan picked me up from work. We went out to his car and it wouldn't start. It would not turn over at all. We tried jumping it, we tried popping the clutch and nothing worked. The battery was fine, it just would not start. We figured it was the starter. I had it towed to a mechanic this morning. I just recently got a call from the repair shop telling me it would cost almost $500 to fix the starter. I knew immediately that it does not cost that much to fix. I called around and did some research on what starters cost and called the mechanic back. He dropped the price to almost half of his original quote. Thank you very much. I was not in the mood to deal with him trying to cheat me out of my money. Especially after what has happened to us in the last month. Hopefully we'll get his car back soon. We need at least one car.
The sad thing is, right before my hood flew up, I told Ryan I was done paying for car issues... I should have bit my tongue.