32 Flavours...and then Some!

Remember how I told the mechanic to test the engine fans to make sure they were still working last week before I took her home? Remember how they said they did and that they were?

Well, they weren't, and I found out the hard way...

I drove to Kenosha Thursday for an invisalign ortho/dental appointment at 1330. The weather was cloudy, cool and slightly rainy. This does figure into things later. Nothing was amiss on the way up to K-town; Bridget ran like a champ and her temp gauge stayed firmly at around the first notch on the gauge. Couldn't give her much of a break in the drivings because J's truck was running crappy and we had left Ulysses at the vet for his blood work/urinalysis check up to see if he was the errant/frequent pisser cat and he needed picking up after 1700 with my vehicle to spare J's driving all the way out to Aurora from Oak Brook. Figured if I left Kenosha around 1500 I should get into the vet's area around 1730.

Visited the Niece Person briefly, then left K-town at 1500ish. Decided to take a different route (Lake Cook rd to 53/290/355/55) in hopes of avoiding the gridlock on the tollway around O'Hare, and instead found myself firmly ensconced in almost constant stop-and-go or slow moving traffic. Bridget Did NOT Like this. Temp gauge at best showed at half mast, pushing towards 3/4 and close to the red zone. Did the old trick of turning up the heat full blast and opened my windows so I wouldn't roast to death while driving like that. It worked...for awhile...Got to the 88/355 split in Lisle and she went into the red and the Magic Steam started coming out from under the hood. I had started to get over once I saw her in the red, but upped my Chicago Nudge game once I saw the Magic Steam and got her safely over onto the left shoulder of 355, shut her down, and called AAA for roadside assistance/towing back to the mechanic. I was *absolutely fucking terrified* being stuck on the side of the road with balls to the wall to wall rush hour traffic while in the drizzling rain...So when Sidney from AAA asked me if I was safe, I told her while my car was safely off the tollway onto the shoulder out of traffic, I have panic disorder and am not doing well--so she expedited the tow for me. Took Heather from O'Hare Towing about 30-45 minutes to get to me, which, all things considered, not too bad on a rainy day when I'd seen lots of cars stalled on the sides of the road.

While I waited for the tow, I called my mechanic and tersely informed him of my whereabouts and the condition of my vehicle and that it was en route shortly back to his shop for further examination to determine why the fuck it overheated--I knew why: I never once heard the engine fans turn on the whole way up or back, so that was why she overheated. He was apologetic and asked had I heard the engine fans and I tersely told him "no" and that I had thought they'd been tested and had passed muster last week when he'd had her. I told him I should be there with my vehicle before their shop closed at 1900 and he said "We'll be here!"

Heh. Couldn't have been more thrilled with the service from Heather and O'Hare towing. She was very nice and extremely cool, handling both my car and me with kindness and care. We get to the shop at 1847 and it's dark and locked. What the everlasting fuck??! Both Heather and I were PISSED!!! Left Bridget in the back of the lot and the key in the lock box and she dropped me off a few blocks shy of home at a nearby major intersection's gas station (she wasn't even supposed to do that, but I asked and she very kindly obliged)--I gave her a $15 tip for all her kindness and help. She was a bit gobsmacked by that, LOL.

First thing next day I call the shop and talk to the head guy at the shop and in no uncertain terms tell him how aggravating it was to be told "We'll be there!" only to find a locked up and closed shop before the posted shop hours were up. He sincerely apologized and told me my car was first to be looked at as soon as the techs got in. True to his word, I got a call back within a half hour. He'd personally watched the techs put charge to my fans and they'd worked then. Watched them idle Bridget in the bay and they sorta worked. He personally took her for a short test drive and she promptly overheated again. So the engine fans are shot. He smartly did NOT charge me for diagnostics or inspection for the problem, as I/we would've refused to pay for that particular charge.

So, yeah...And all that later and we don't think the issue with the running hot is really completely fixed just yet, either...We had to go into the city for a wedding yesterday and were caught in slow and stop-and-go traffic in low 70F degrees weather and her temp gauge crept to a hair above the mid point in the midst of the worst of that, which J is not happy with, and neither am I. Once we got to a decent speed and quit it with the stop-and-go, she cooled right down to her normal quarter warm on the gauge, which is good, but it's a bit cool for her to be running at half mast without the AC running on a 70F degree day...So we'll be talking to them about her again tomorrow when J goes over there to pick his truck up from service. Yeah, he brought his truck there for service after all this--don't know if that's a good, bad, or indifferent thing, but...yeah...He gave them a laundry list of things wrong with his truck and they found all the things he told them and not anything else to add to the bill, so there's that, but...We really need to find us a different mechanic, I think...

Sigh... :/

Per the advice of a wise, longtime online friend, I called J's mechanic to see what they would charge for replacing the ignition lock cylinder and to check my instrument cluster lights. To change out the cylinder, re-key everything and re-code plus taking out the instrument cluster to check it would be $358.64 with four keys cut. Labor was 171.80, parts were 172.20. We really saved on the labor--Advantage Chevy was charging at least $325 for that with their rough estimate; didn't really save on the parts, which I'm sure just might have come from a dealer anyway, but we did save about 10 bucks on the main part. I know it's about the 12 bucks they charged to get keys made for Bridget at a dealer (and they work better for some reason than hardware store made keys), so we didn't save any money there, but...yeah. Much better deal on the labor!

The doors and ignition now work like buttah again, where they were all getting more than a bit touchy at times before replacement. Problem solved.

The instrument cluster is a bit more of a cluster fuck. The individual bulbs are allegedly not replaceable, the whole unit needs to be replaced to get the burnt out bulbs operational again, and the burnt out bulbs are in most inconvenient places on the cluster, so yeah, I need this to be rectified. Used part goes for $90 but registers at the mileage it came out of its former car at and cannot be reprogrammed to my current mileage once it's removed and $50 for labor. New part goes for (gasp!) $450 and includes programming it with my current mileage. $50 for labor, which isn't terrible, but $450??!?!? OUCH, not for a 13 year old car!! :/ J's going to do some research on how the mileage difference between the respective clusters needs to be reported to the DMV for emissions purposes and I should call my auto insurance agent to see if the difference in mileage will impact my insurance costs. It seems to reason that the DMV especially would be most suspicious of a significant odometer change for the lesser in this case when going in for emissions next year...

Sigh. Ain't it always something??? :/

Anyway...

Thanks, SBG, for hitting me with the clue-by-four regarding the excessive cost the dealer wanted to charge me for this particular repair. Didn't end up saving copious amounts of coin at J's mechanic, but I did save a fair amount! Appreciate the counsel, sir, as does my pocketbook!! :) :)

My 2001 Saturn SL2 has treated me very well over the last 13 years. As she ages, though, she's inevitably developing some issues. This is expected and not terribly surprising, but a bit annoying and inconvenient.

The current issue is the windshield wipers are not working. They started randomly giving me trouble about a year ago when, on the slow setting, they would randomly stop wiping, then start back up again as normal. My solution was to go to setting three on the intermittent setting, which was almost as fast as slow wipe mode, then switch back to slow wipe mode after a few minutes. No big whoop, figured since it was so random and relatively rare in its occurrence that I still had plenty of life in the wiper motor/switches...

About a month ago, I noticed the wipers arms were moving a bit slower than normal on all settings upon initial start-up, then after they worked for a little while the speed would go to normal and all would be well. That has since turned to them *always* moving with very little oomph across the windshield, then finally this past weekend, to virtually nothing. In fact, on Saturday afternoon when I attempted to use them they stopped a quarter of the way up my windshield and it took forever fiddling with the control arm to get them to cycle and settle again at the bottom of the windshield. Thank Gods I was only trying to clear my windshield of dusty build-up and it was NOT precipitating, and that I was in town on my way home from a nearby local eatery and not on the tollway!

J suspects, as I do, that the motor on the mechanism is barely hanging on and about to give up the ghost. He's checked all the Saturn forums online to see if it's just a glitch with my model that might be able to be fixed with some tweaking/tightening/minor repair, but found nothing. Which is a bummer, because working windshield wipers are kind of mandatory for driving here in the Midwest where the weather can get wet and nasty at the drop of a hat.

I called my trusty mechanic this morning and I explained what was going on; he asked me some questions I think wherein he was trying to determine whether it was a bad switch or a bad motor. After answering same, we both agreed it was probably a bad motor. He priced me a new motor at $206 plus tax without labor. Ugh, that's pretty steep, but with Saturn not being in production at all for several years now, plus being a 13 year old car...yeah, parts like that are going to be expensive. I just pray that the labor isn't too terribly extensive on this sort of repair. Let's also hope he doesn't find anything else wrong with her while he's got her; Bill always does a cursory complimentary check over of major systems (brakes, steering, suspension, battery, etc) when he does any repair work on our cars, so...yeah...please pray/chant/light a candle/send good car vibes my way...

I would've brought her in today, Get 'Er Done and all that rot, but it's been precipitating and getting to mechanic is a bit of a ride on the freeway--the last place I want to be without working windshield wipers. :/ So, since it's supposed to be clear tomorrow, I'll be taking her down to Bill tomorrow for the necessaries. As I requested--best wishes are more than welcome! :/