November 04, 2005
Sitting Spraying and Steaming
Last night was one I don't wish to re-live any time soon. After work I drove to the Safeway near my home, went in, got various comestibles, came out, as usual, to my car. What wasn't usual was that there was steam coming out from around the hood. I'm thinking "Ok, that's not cool", so I opened the hood, no steam, cloesd the hood, steam. I noticed that the inside of the hood was wet, and I know the car has been leaking a little antifreeze, so I looked underneath and sure enough, a puddle.
I drove to a nearby gas station to fill up, and noticed the steam was getting worse and upon closer observation the dripping was quite obvious. Then as I was leaving the station the "LOW COOLANT" light came on. "Oh fiddle" I said (yeah, ok, right), and headed off to the unfortunately only place open that time of night, Canadian Tire. After 1 1/2 hours of hanging around waiting they tell me my water pump needs replacing, to the tune of $356!! The f@#$ing pump itself only costs $70, but the work involved was over $200, thank you Pontiac for making such an easy to get to water pump.
The first thing that came into my mind was that I couldn't get home, and how was I going to get to work tomorrow, etc. Luckily the guy at the counter lives up by me and offered a ride home, saving me a $15 cab ride. The other positives to this is Amber had a migraine and really needed the extra sleep she got with me taking care of Xavier, and he enjoyed having me home. A negative (other than the $356) is that I still need to fork out money for 2 tires to replace the bald ones on the car. I'm not going for anything extravagant anymore, no sir, gimme used ones for $40 a piece installed and balanced, that'll be fine thank you.
The car was fixed relatively fast and I got to work at 12 just in time for the phones to stop ringing off the hook.
Posted by Oorgo at November 4, 2005 06:28 PM Permalink - Category: Things | TrackBackYeah, I had to replace the waterpump on the Corolla last year. $450 - although they did put in a new timing belt and thermostat, too. I think by nature, waterpumps are hard to get at...
Posted by: Squiddy at November 5, 2005 07:29 PMYep, most waterpumps are a biatch to get to, which is why they usually replace them with the timing belt, since the belt usually goes first. But look at it this way - at least you won't have to replace the waterpump again (they usually last a long while).
Posted by: shank at November 7, 2005 08:50 AMFiddly-assed pieces of mechanical grief. When they go, they're a bitch to deal with. It's their nature.
Posted by: Ted at November 7, 2005 11:14 AMIt picked a perfect time too, since I also need a couple new tires, now I'm gonna throw on the cheapest I can find.
Posted by: Oorgo at November 7, 2005 03:39 PMMost of the mechanics where I live can't even read or write, so I figure I should be able to fix the shit they can. As far as new tires, try calling a few auto salvage places, alot of times they will get wrecked cars with brand-new name brand tires you can buy for nothing. (or close to it) I recently got four new tires, already mounted and balanced on rims for thirty bucks each. I put them on myself, and viola, four new tires for 120 dollars.
Posted by: Dortch at November 8, 2005 11:30 AMYeah there's a place nearby called re-run tire, I went there but unfortunately we had our first snow of the winter on Sunday night so everybody is looking for tires. The only ones they had were just slightly better than my current 3 year old tires, and all the shops are tripping over themselves trying to install tires.
Posted by: Oorgo at November 8, 2005 12:17 PMI'm looking at these tires:
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Kumho&tireModel=Touring+A%2FS+795&vehicleSearch=true&partnum=965SR5TAS795&fromCompare1=yes&place=11
$77 (CDN) and they look like fairly good tires.
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