So now that I'm out on "my own", I have to fully take on the responsibility of taking care of my own car.... And my girlfriend's car, since her parents have thoroughly disowned her.
Since my car is fairly new (to me, anyway), and caked in 6 months of PA road grime, dust, bird poop, and bug guts, I took it down to my parent's house to hit it with the hose and clean stuff up.
When I bought it, the car was immaculate. Perfect paintjob. No scrapes. No dings. No bad spots. Perfect glass.
But as I washed and rinsed off the crap, it became very quickly clear that this was no longer the case.
My front bumper, hood and windshield show obvious signs of battle damage caused by rocks and other debris being kicked up by trucks on Pennsylvania's highways (PennDOT DOES NOT keep highways clear of debris in any way, shape or form. You are much more likely to encounter gravel on I-83 than on a friggin' hickass back road - not to mention blown out tires, smeared roadkill, etc. etc. etc.). These are rocks... Being hurled at your car at a potential velocity of well over 100mph. The whole front end is pockmarked with little tiny dents, scrapes, and chunks out of the windshield glass where particularly strong impacts occured. My once-clear headlight lenses have been sandblasted pretty nicely.
Since gravel is nearly ubiquitous on intersections of rural roads, it naturally follows that the car should make glorious roostertails on hard acceleration. That would be REALLY COOL - if I drove a rear-wheel drive car. But instead, such roostertailing results in my wheel wells, suspension, certain engine components, and side panels being peppered in a gravelly hell. It shows there. The same effect exists behind the rear wheels as well - but not as pronounced.
And now lets take a look at my right rear quarter panel. Somewhere along the line, one of the balance weights on that particualr wheel decided to come flying off... In transit. It made it's escape on a lovely diagnol trajectory that took it skimming off that panel. So now I need to pay someone to rebalance the wheel. Joy.
Hey, lets check out the roof. Nothing could be bad up there....
.... Or not. The roof looks like someone took a metal comb and dragged it across the paint in a nice little "ima ****** up your paint" pattern. Oh, and there's a rust spot. Not a big one. But DEFINITELY a rust spot.
Sucks, but it's reality, and there's nothing that can be done about it. On to taking care of the girl's '95 Subaru.
Fixing this thing up has been an ongoing process for quite some time. The interior has that clunky, tweaky, square mid-90's Subaru look and feel to it, but it's kind of sexy in it's own way. The fold-out cupholder that completely blocks access to the radio and climate controls is HAWT.
The crappy ghetto-booty-thuggalicious hubcaps and bright pink front license plate with her name on it that she bought when she was first given the car years ago are still there. The automatic seatbelts are the bane of my existance, but lend some unnameable quality to the character of this car. And it's brown. She says it's tan. It's brown. I think I love the car almost as much as I love her. But that's besides the point.
I walk around to look at this ENORMOUS chunk of rust on her right rear quarter panel that's been bugging me for a very long time. I do a doubletake - there is no rust. Just a reddish-brown primer. Calling her over, I ask wtf happened. She explains that she decided to get it taken care of for me. I don't like where this is going, and ask how much it cost her.
.... ..... $750. For less than a square foot of rust repair and primer. I explain the importance of not cheating on me with another mechanic, and not frivelously spending RAGING ASSTONS of money on things that I could fix for $15 on a boring Saturday. I also took time to explain that they probably took the actual cost figure and multiplied it by two, because she's a young (18) white female driving a beater. After all, the whole repair took somewhere less her 6hr shift at work that day. Needless to say, the car WILL NOT be going back for it's coat of "PREMIUM COLOR-MATCHED PAINT" - it'll either stay primer, or it'll become primer-with-clear, or maybe one day, I'll get adventurous and give the whole panel (or perhaps the whole damned car) a nice new coat of brown. Err, tan.
I moved on to the next major problem with it. I had NO IDEA when the next oil change was due. Silly me for thinking it was going to be documented somewhere, but I went ahead and checked the glovebox - whereupon, I found an invoice for a similarly rapacious diagnostic - performed at the local Scooby dealership a few months ago for a cold-start problem. They found nothing wrong, charged $400 for it, and left it at that. Come winter, I'll attack the problem (being that it's not cold enough anymore for the problem to manifest, I can't do anything about it) - and probably find a $4 sensor that went bad.
So I went ahead and changed the oil in it, just to make sure. And I'll be DAMNED if the oil filter wasn't on there hellaciously tight. 4 busted knuckles later, the heap was ready for another trip.
And you know, I'm ever-so-slightly jealous that she has ABS, 4-wheel disc brakes, cruise control, traction control, and AWD.... All of which my car lacks. But hey, at least I got the rust!
Since my car is fairly new (to me, anyway), and caked in 6 months of PA road grime, dust, bird poop, and bug guts, I took it down to my parent's house to hit it with the hose and clean stuff up.
When I bought it, the car was immaculate. Perfect paintjob. No scrapes. No dings. No bad spots. Perfect glass.
But as I washed and rinsed off the crap, it became very quickly clear that this was no longer the case.
My front bumper, hood and windshield show obvious signs of battle damage caused by rocks and other debris being kicked up by trucks on Pennsylvania's highways (PennDOT DOES NOT keep highways clear of debris in any way, shape or form. You are much more likely to encounter gravel on I-83 than on a friggin' hickass back road - not to mention blown out tires, smeared roadkill, etc. etc. etc.). These are rocks... Being hurled at your car at a potential velocity of well over 100mph. The whole front end is pockmarked with little tiny dents, scrapes, and chunks out of the windshield glass where particularly strong impacts occured. My once-clear headlight lenses have been sandblasted pretty nicely.
Since gravel is nearly ubiquitous on intersections of rural roads, it naturally follows that the car should make glorious roostertails on hard acceleration. That would be REALLY COOL - if I drove a rear-wheel drive car. But instead, such roostertailing results in my wheel wells, suspension, certain engine components, and side panels being peppered in a gravelly hell. It shows there. The same effect exists behind the rear wheels as well - but not as pronounced.
And now lets take a look at my right rear quarter panel. Somewhere along the line, one of the balance weights on that particualr wheel decided to come flying off... In transit. It made it's escape on a lovely diagnol trajectory that took it skimming off that panel. So now I need to pay someone to rebalance the wheel. Joy.
Hey, lets check out the roof. Nothing could be bad up there....
.... Or not. The roof looks like someone took a metal comb and dragged it across the paint in a nice little "ima ****** up your paint" pattern. Oh, and there's a rust spot. Not a big one. But DEFINITELY a rust spot.
Sucks, but it's reality, and there's nothing that can be done about it. On to taking care of the girl's '95 Subaru.
Fixing this thing up has been an ongoing process for quite some time. The interior has that clunky, tweaky, square mid-90's Subaru look and feel to it, but it's kind of sexy in it's own way. The fold-out cupholder that completely blocks access to the radio and climate controls is HAWT.
The crappy ghetto-booty-thuggalicious hubcaps and bright pink front license plate with her name on it that she bought when she was first given the car years ago are still there. The automatic seatbelts are the bane of my existance, but lend some unnameable quality to the character of this car. And it's brown. She says it's tan. It's brown. I think I love the car almost as much as I love her. But that's besides the point.
I walk around to look at this ENORMOUS chunk of rust on her right rear quarter panel that's been bugging me for a very long time. I do a doubletake - there is no rust. Just a reddish-brown primer. Calling her over, I ask wtf happened. She explains that she decided to get it taken care of for me. I don't like where this is going, and ask how much it cost her.
.... ..... $750. For less than a square foot of rust repair and primer. I explain the importance of not cheating on me with another mechanic, and not frivelously spending RAGING ASSTONS of money on things that I could fix for $15 on a boring Saturday. I also took time to explain that they probably took the actual cost figure and multiplied it by two, because she's a young (18) white female driving a beater. After all, the whole repair took somewhere less her 6hr shift at work that day. Needless to say, the car WILL NOT be going back for it's coat of "PREMIUM COLOR-MATCHED PAINT" - it'll either stay primer, or it'll become primer-with-clear, or maybe one day, I'll get adventurous and give the whole panel (or perhaps the whole damned car) a nice new coat of brown. Err, tan.
I moved on to the next major problem with it. I had NO IDEA when the next oil change was due. Silly me for thinking it was going to be documented somewhere, but I went ahead and checked the glovebox - whereupon, I found an invoice for a similarly rapacious diagnostic - performed at the local Scooby dealership a few months ago for a cold-start problem. They found nothing wrong, charged $400 for it, and left it at that. Come winter, I'll attack the problem (being that it's not cold enough anymore for the problem to manifest, I can't do anything about it) - and probably find a $4 sensor that went bad.
So I went ahead and changed the oil in it, just to make sure. And I'll be DAMNED if the oil filter wasn't on there hellaciously tight. 4 busted knuckles later, the heap was ready for another trip.
And you know, I'm ever-so-slightly jealous that she has ABS, 4-wheel disc brakes, cruise control, traction control, and AWD.... All of which my car lacks. But hey, at least I got the rust!
