All Things Woompty

Guess what I'm getting for Valentine's Day?

I took my car in today, to get a smog check and an oil change. And as I drove away I had this sudden "Oh my God, my car is a disaster zone, I should have cleaned it up before I left it there!" And then I thought "What the hell am I thinking? My friends get in that same car all the time and I don't care about it being messy." But seriously, I have issues. I can't take my car to one of those car washes where they vacuum the inside of my car because I don't want them to see the horrible lived in condition it's in right now, and then I realized that I was going to let these mechanics just hop on in there and oh my GOD what they must think of me!

It's like shaving your legs before the Girly Parts Exam, you know? We all do it, even though hello, they should NOT be looking at our legs when they are examining our hoo-has. My mechanic should not care about what's in the passenger seat, only about what's under the hood.
Anyway, it's been an adventurous day for me today in the World of Cars.See, my "Check Engine" light turned on right before the New Year and I've been ignoring it since then. Why? Because I am simultaneously lazy as hell and busy as fuck. But my registration is due next week and so I finally made room in my busy schedule to go get my smog check. Well, when I mentioned to the guy that oh, by the way, my engine light is on...he mentioned that oh, by the way, then the car would probably fail. Good times.

So he called me later to tell me that yep, it failed, but no worries..it was probably just an O2 sensor, might run me around $340 all told, including the oil change and the smog check and the diagnostic and the new sensor.

BUT THEN!!! Then he called me and said "Hey, you need a new catlytic converter! And that'll run you about $700 MORE!" To which I said "Holy shit, that's a lot of money!" So then I called my friend's mechanic, who said, yes, it may cost that much depending on the construction of the manifold. And then I called Kevin, who discovered that sure enough, the catlytic converter for my 1996 Honda Civic costs in the neighborhood of $500 so $700 is about right when you figure in labor. So then I called my new friend and mechanic Clarence and said "Okay Clarence, take all my money and fix my catalytic converter please!" I drew the line at paying him $30 to clean my battery though, because seriously, I could do that myself with a 50 cent box of baking soda!

And so now here I sit, waiting to hear that my lived in looking car is fixed and smogged and ready to be picked up so I can head up to Escondido in it. Oh, and did I mention that my accessory belts also need to be replaced? But those are just $175 so I'll take care of them later.
I hopped online myself and started looking at the prices on these converters and realized two things: A) I should have purchased a 1995 Civic, because it looks like they changed the design after that year and the design change is what caused the price of the converter to go sky high and B) living in California sucks, because our emission requirements means that my car needs a special, more expensive version of the converter installed.

I really shouldn't complain too much though, since I've owned the car since 1999 and this is the very first major engine problem that I've encountered. It's completely paid off, it gets great gas mileage, and it's held its Blue Book value really well. Once I get this and the belts done, along with the tires I was already planning on getting later this year, I'll be done putting money into it aside from oil changes and I can buy a new one next year.

But damn, that $900 bill is going to hurt. Sorry, babe.

posted by Melinda @ 5:00 PM