Thursday, May 03, 2007

Oldest turning 20



Well he turns 20 in the up coming week. His friends are coming over- I'll be grilling up a storm. And what makes him happiest is that his finals will be over!

Broken Cars

So I finally got back my 2002 Taurus Duratec at noon on Saturday. I brought it in, still driving although not perfect on Tuesday 11 days prior to get the trans rebuilt. ($2300) Picked it up 2 days later. Didn't drive it much till the next day and thought it did not sound or feel perfect. Drove up to Mount Laurel, NJ for a wedding. Got off of I295 , stopped at a light and BANG BANG we could feel the slamming inside the trans - then no motion. I waited and nursed it back into motion - made the wedding and luckily back home. Monday I take it back to the trans shop- get a call at 4 "we drove the car and nothing is wrong." So I pick it up and on Tuesday I take an early lunch, cruse up and down the interstate for an hour and experience similar violent failure. I pull into the trans shop, leave the car running and ask them to drive. I could feel imperfection as we pulled out of the parking lot but the mechanic insisted on achieving catastrophic failure 4 miles from the shop. So we sat around discussing our children's upcoming proms as we waited for the tow truck ( on their ticket.) It took till Saturday for them to fix it- I do not know how many times they took the trans out or how many rebuilds it received but when I came to pick it up Saturday one of the mechanics let slip a comment about the planetary gear exploding the previous night.

Well I called my 17 year old son and brought the car over to him just in time for him to leave for the prom-- he said he had a good time.

So on Sunday both my boys had wheels, I had wheels and T had her truck- I should have gone grocery shopping Sunday. Monday the pulley bearing breaks off of the water pump of my Pontiac, the serpentine belt shreds and the pulley goes rolling down route 40 ($330). That evening a rear universal goes on Ts F150($200). I decide I need to take the next morning off, rent a car ($33 from enterprise)and T and I shuttle the Pontiac and truck to the shop and by the end of the Day all of the cars are working again. Hoorah!