When last we left the Mighty Taurus, it had been struck down by a mysterious ailment that defied diagnosis.
Today, a new chapter begins: The Taurus Dies Again.
Since my sister's car work (thus far - we still think something needs adjusting) prompted us to bring the Taurus home, it's mostly been sitting collecting road dust and bird waste in the driveway. We couldn't trust it, what with its bad habit of dying in traffic and not wanting to restart intermittently. It couldn't even be trusted to be untrustworthy. Recently, Dad began trying to force it to stall: he would replicate the last route he drove in which it stalled (out to my job and back to town), and hope it would die as he approached the auto shop. Until today, it hadn't worked. Then we received a call from the cell phone... Yes, the Mighty Taurus stalled out again on the offramp. He tried calling his auto club (Allstate), but they were singularly unhelpful, so we had to try calling a tow truck for him. By the time we managed this, he'd gotten the Taurus restarted and limped into the auto shop, so we had to call and cancel the tow before going down to pick him up.
Part of the flurry of calls during this ten-minute phonefest was a call to the auto shop, so they knew the Taurus was on its way, by tow or not. This Taurus, by now, has quite a long record at this auto shop, so they knew all about it. They were ready for it this time, and gave it a try as soon as it came in. It started fine for them, but Dad, on a hunch, told the mechanic to idle it for a bit. He did, and sure enough the engine stalled out and refused to restart.
Insert the Hallelujeah Chorus here.
This was the moment we've all been waiting for! It had finally acted up in front of a mechanic! Furthermore, by the time Mom and I showed up with Dad's ride home, they finally believed they had a diagnosis! It boiled down to me being right about the electrical system being wonky; no spark, ergo no spark plug action, ergo dead car. They also plan to replace the engine module thingy which we had hoped they would try replacing before, because the only reason it would only pull this at idle is if that module was malfunctioning. And there were a few more thingies and dealies and whatchamacallits that needed adjusting or replacing or sacrificing to. Total damage is expected to be around five hundred bucks, which is less than I could get a reliable replacement.
So there is a very real possibility that I'll get what I really want for my birthday this year: a car I can trust to drive again.
And, after Allstate Auto Club's stellar performance in his hour of need, I think Dad's finally going to listen to us and switch to AAA.
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5 comments:
Woo! I could hear the choir singing as I read your post!
AAA has lots of discounts at various places too (including Lens Crafters, which is always a better discount than any coupons they have)
The Taurus seems to be running fine now, though it seems to have lingering hard-start issues (nothing like it was, but just enough to make one slightly nervous... or maybe I'm just frellin' paranoid about it.) So we're hopeful that they actually found the problem and fixed it. Just need to squeeze a few more years outta the ol' thing... that's all I ask. That, and that it starts and stops only when I tell it to.
I know AAA has a half-million discount thingies - they even have a Barnes & Noble one, but since I have a B&N Membership card I think it's negated there - and I really ought to use it more often for those. I'm also likely overdue for new lenses... I keep looking at the LensCrafter discount, and then I look at my bank account and the bill for the car and think about how the cats need check-ups and my teeth need cleaning and I need new shoes again (didn't even last a year before the liner wore out) and somehow it doesn't happen.
Whee!!!
AAA is great. And Jade's right - the AAA discount in our area is something like 30% off the glasses.
So far, so good on the Taurus. I even hyperloaded the engine on the way home - AC on full, radio, even lights on high beam - and it didn't stall out when I hit the driveway, so I'm very hopeful that the problem has finally been resolved.
Yeah, the LC discount is about 30% on the lenses, and something off the eye exam (or maybe it's 30% on the exam and something else off the lenses.) Probably ought to make my teeth a higher priority, though, as I can still see (more or less) through my current frames. I'm a bit hesitant to have anything resembling a medical/health procedure before 2008's finished with everyone.
can't say I blame you on that!
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