Saturday, October 4, 2008

A long Monday night

Monday night, after a long work day from 5am-6pm, I went out driving to a store to get a few things when my car stalled out as I was driving. I managed to glide to an unbusy street and my hazards stilled worked. I then called my motor club through my insurance and told them I needed a tow. They contacted a local towing company and told me 40 minutes to an hour. I was shocked at the time, but what else could I do? So, I called up a friend just to talk to while I waited. Lucky for me, my friend had a contact to the towing company and they were there within ten minutes.
The tow truck driver had a lot of knowledge about cars and checked on a few things, and had an idea about what was wrong. He was not able to fix anything at the moment, but he did look around my engine. He did check the pressure from the gas pump (this is important later in the story). He then towed me to a local auto shop (F&F). I dropped it off there and the tow truck driver then took me home, how very nice of him.
I then called my parents to discuss my options with the car. It is 11 years old and there are a few problems with it. So if it was going to be a lot of money, there was no sense in fixing it. About 30 minutes had gone by when I got a call from F&F. The mechanic told me there was no pressure coming from the fuel pump and that was going to cost 618 dollars plus labor; and they do not change those at that service station. Well, going back to what the tow truck driver had done, I told the guy on the phone that I DID have pressure there, and that I will sleep on it. About 30 minutes after that I get another call from F&F, saying it was not the fuel pump, it was a bad relay. What he actually did was took my air conditioning relay (air conditioning didn't work anyway) and switched it with my fuel pump relay. The car started right up.
I went out to get my car on Tuesday and found out that it was 50 dollars for the work they did on it. Now, I know nothing about cars, but the only thing they did was switch two relay in my car......I think that was a little much for that kind of work, but I paid it and the car still runs.
All week I have been looking at used cars and new cars. I would really like to have a new car, but I have two mortgage payments, two credit card payments, and also paying Orkin for three years. I need to take care of those before adding a car payment. So my 11 year old car has to last me a little bit longer.

2 comments:

RainbowDishes said...

I am glad the car is working again. You could have called if you needed some help. But let's hope the car makes it for awhile longer.

RainbowDishes said...

I know you are very busy, but it is good to see you posting again! :)