When It Rains, It Pours

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And we are definitely making it rain for the mechanics in this town. Buckle your seat belts people, this is a long one. You remember the car trouble we had with Carl last week, right? $565 later (ouch), he's running like a champ. Turns out the timing belt didn't break, it just slipped out of place but had to be fully replaced because there was an oil leak or something like that... That's about as far as I get with car talk before I start tuning out.

After fixing the timing belt, the mechanics told us we also needed a new radiator because we had a crack/leak in ours. It would only cost $275 more. Only. Well, husband to the rescue! We ordered the part online for $75 and he installed it in a few hours on Saturday. Booyah.

What's next? Well apparently poor Carl has a tire with really low tread so we'll have to get that fixed too before the big move... not a huge deal but my money tree isn't growing any faster these days.

Is that it, you ask? No, no. There's more. Now we can turn to Curvy the CR-V (yes, we name all of our cars). It was literally the day after Carl died and I'm maybe slightly superstitious, so I was passing the spot where Carl had died the night before and thinking, please just get me home today, Curvy. No more problems. I kid you not, I was accelerating after getting stuck in some traffic and Curvy started making a funny noise and shaking. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!? I couldn't believe it. I originally thought I just had a flat tire, but when I pulled over and looked (in the same spot where the tow truck picked me up the night before) there was no flat tire. Harummph.

Over the next two weeks, Curvy kept randomly doing the same thing over and over and much more frequently. It was getting to the point where at certain times I would be barely tapping the brakes and it would be stopping, or I would be accelerating pedal to the medal and the car wouldn't let me get past 50 mph and would shake. Not exactly safe on the freeway.

Fast forward to yesterday when we finally got a chance to take Curvy into the shop since Carl's radiator was fixed. The mechanic said that the brake fluid had been contaminated and the whole brake system would need to be replaced for $1,300. 

:( There are not enough frowny faces to express how sad/mad I am! The mechanics said they don't know when it happened, but was most likely when the car was last serviced (probably before we bought it). Sucky. Very very sucky.

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The silver lining is that Z talked them down to around $1,100 by finding a 10% off coupon online for "first time customers." Worth a try even though we had just brought in the Camry. He said that he had already given us a break since he knew we had just shelled out some major bones last week, but gave us a 7% discount instead. Nice guy.

Also, I am really glad this is all happening now so we have plenty of time to fix it before we go on our 1,500 mile road trip back up to Washington. At least it's not ruining our travel plans or stranding us on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere in California.

Wow, this is a long post... so that's all the car trouble that's been pouring down on us lately. We should be good for like a few years, right?

Have you had any car trouble recently? Any "when it rains, it pours" stories?