| We Got Some Bad News. And We Got Some Good News. |
[Dec. 21st, 2009|06:17 pm] |
I’ll give the good news first. I have the car back, and the whole thing cost me $25.
The damn thing was flooded. Which, interestingly enough, was Mrs. Professor’s idea in the first place.
In advance of this weekend’s storm, our new landlord had arranged things for maximum convenience in clearing snow. He moved the trash cans, and the recycling bin, and all the cars, and I don’t know what all. They park one car in front of the house, and one in the driveway. He put all three in the street, so he could snowblow the driveway first. He borrowed our keys from Mrs. P so he could position our auto with his.
Well, it turns out – and this is pretty much the bad news – that if one of these modern cars is cold, and you start it and turn it off, start it and turn it off, it’ll flood. And that, apparently, is what it did.
Well, I swan.
The tale:
The garage called around 1:30 with a report. “Might be the timing belt”, said the mechanic. “But, but, it’s supposed to be new!”, I exclaimed. “Oh, good”, he said, “it might not be the timing belt after all.” He reported that they didn’t expect to have it finished by the end of the day, scheduled cars being before me.
I called Enterprise Auto Rental in Quincy – the one on Billings Road, just behind Wolly Wine – and asked if they had a full-sized car I could pick up that afternoon. They did. I finished shoveling out the space, and headed for the subway. (I swung past the garage, which is on the way anyway, and grabbed the handicapped placard, the toll transceiver, and the gazinta that lets me play the ‘pod over the car’s FM radio). Then, just as I was about to feed dollars into the ticket-dispensing machine at the station, my phone rang.
It was Mrs. P, telling me that Columbia Gulf had called, and I should call them. I did. The mechanic told me that they’d gotten to the car, and it had been flooded. “We thought it mighta bin the timing belt – we weren’t getting any compression at all.” He said that I could probably pick it up in an hour. He also told me that, if this happened again, to floor the accelerator, which would tell the computer to stop injecting gas, and crank it until it started. And, if I start it, warm it up – don’t turn it off still cold.
Isn’t this a bit of an engineering problem? Surely someone else must have wanted to take a short trip in cold weather.
I went to the Sugar Bowl and had a (not terribly good) chicken salad sandwich and coffee, called Enterprise and cancelled the rental, and read the New Yorker (but not the fiction!) for a while. I picked up the car. The mechanic told me I should run it around for a bit and try to clean the spark plugs. The Expressway, at that hour, is the Distressway, so I drove down Wollaston Beach, out Furnace Brook Parkway, and inbound on the highway for a bit.
Let us hope that things are co-operative in the morning. I see now reason they oughtn’t be, but let us hope.
(Just to let me know it’s not just me, there was a terrible smell in the house this morning. Fuel oil? Burning insulation? Bleach? I sniffed around in the basement, just in case, but found nothing smoldering, dripping, or suppurating. Later, though, we heard voices in the basement, saying works like “broken”. The smell has cleared up. At this point, I have no idea. But I do know it isn’t my problem.) |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
anonymous_jones's Friends Page
chipper
excited
