A Day In Which I Did Not Mind Being A Buick Owner

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

I got a smokin' deal on an '02 Buick LeSabre with low miles (like 20K miles). Now, I know that the average age of a Buick owner is about the same as the average life expectancy age but I could not turn this deal down. I don't really like the way I look while driving the car and I really, really don't like the way my wife looks in the car. People look at us like we are borrowing the car from a (much older) relative. But my grandmother offered the car to me for $1 and (after I tried to talk her down to 50 cents) I accepted the offer.

Recently, the car started to have it's "check engine" light come on. Now I don't know how you could get more vague than that. Check engine? Sure, let me do that real quick, yep, its still there, now what?

We took it to a local car parts store that offers the service of telling us why the light is coming on and the code that the device spit out was also vague (something was running lean). They cleared the light thinking it was a fluke and we were good to go (for about a week when the light came back on). Well I thought it was the same error causing the light to come back on so even though I had to drive the car to Texas, I just left it on. Now, in Texas you have to have your car inspected annually and they will not even inspect it until that light is off so it was off to a mechanic.

The result was a quote for nearly $800 due to some vacuum issues. This sucks (no pun intended, ok, pun intended). But what could we do? After checking with a guy I know who I trust on car issues, I found out this was the going rate and I was mentally prepared to pay the price.

We dropped the car off and I provided the estimate and pointed out the things that I wanted done. As the service guy was entering the work into the computer, he said that he had no idea where the $800 figure came from and it would likely only be $400. This was great and I went to work (the wife dropped me off) feeling pretty good (and less upset at the car). Then the service guy called me in the afternoon and said as they were getting ready to perform the service, they discovered the real problem of why the vacuum was not acting as it should. It was a small plastic cap of some sort and would only cost me $2.

Faithful readers of this blog know that going from $800 to $400 would be a monumentally good day for me. Going from $800 to $2, well, I really can't describe it to you.

But look at it this way, in one day I spent TWICE as much in repair bills as what I paid for the car originally.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon