car – Catharsis of the Bogue

February was a good month. We used our tax return and paid off the last bit of our car! I wish it was the mortgage but I will take what I can. Even though I can, I am leery about taking off the comprehensive insurance. No sooner than we had it paid off, things started to be….not quite right.

Does everyone know what kind of power steering fluid they need to use? Most people would say “power steering fluid of course. What kind of a stupid question is that?”. Turns out it is not a stupid question if you drive a Chrysler vehicle. That includes all Dodge and I am assuming Jeep as well as Plymouth. Seems that somewhere in the early part of this century the engineers at Chrysler decided that power steering fluid is not good enough and the whole system needs to be filled with Transmission Fluid. And they have their own transmission fluid too. (use ATF+4 folks)

It is very disconcerting to warm up the car so you can take the kids to school and when you come back ready to go, there is a huge pool of transmission fluid on the ground. It was really bad because the transmission was just over a year old and it took over a month to get done. But that is another post. So a huge pool of fluid on the ground and a strange sucking sound darn near made me need to go change my pants.

Luckily, when I got under the thing it was only a hose that had burst. A quick internet search informed me of the tranny fluid fiasco and it was an easy fix. I just have a lovely stain on my driveway to show for it.

This is also the time when little things start to break and fall apart inside the car. And then it makes funny noises that makes me think broken steering support. An then there is one warped rotor that is not too bad but makes the thing shake like crazy if you are braking from faster than 30 mph. You get the idea.

But at least it is our car now. There are days that I hope one of those tailgaiters will just plow into me so we can upgrade. Without the kids inside of course.

Any other crazy post paid off stories? I would love to hear them. Comments and email are below. I am also kicking around a “minor car repair” forum/information dump thing if anyone would be interested. There are so many things that sound impressive coming from a mechanic but take some basic tools and an hour of time to fix. Take brakes for instance. A new set of front pads installed will run you at least $100 at a shop. You can do the same job with a couple of socket wrenches, a C clamp and $15-$50 worth of brake pads. I go with the lifetime warranty ones that are on the lower end and are $23. I can do a set now in about 45 minutes and that includes a bathroom break.

Maybe I will do an ebook series of repairs as my car falls apart.

Until next time,

Justin

So we are starting this Pre writing challenge (see my page here) and today is one of those days that it would be incredible to have a few posts lined up I could just hit publish and be done with it.

This morning, I went out and turned on the car so it would be warm when I took my kids to school. I do it most every morning because it is cold. A few minutes later, we went back out to the car to go to school and it was making some strange sucking, bubbling sound. Of course the kids start to panic and I did a bit when I looked under the car and there was a huge puddle of transmission fluid!

Now I am paranoid about transmissions. They break way too easily in my opinion and are incredibly expensive. I do a lot of repairs on the cars and can do most things short of tearing down the engine or fixing the transmission. I did a bunch in high school shop but it didn’t cover transmissions.

So we took the other car to school and I am dreading what I am going to find. I hope it is a gasket on the pan, or a screw has fallen out, something I can repair. I finally get the car jacked up and get under it and guess what. It wasn’t the transmission after all. I almost peed myself with relief.

Come to find out, Chrysler had some brilliant idea that the power steering fluid needs to run through a small cooler like a radiator. One of these hoses had burst and the power steering fluid in a Dodge Caravan is actually transmission fluid. There were several unprintable 4 letter words used to describe the lineage of certain engineers and their anatomical deficiencies.

So this is an easy fix for the car. If it were not for the internet and auto repair forums I would not have known all of the things that I needed to fix it. The net is like that. Out there and waiting to suck us in. Larger point, I have a bunch of stuff to do today and i am putting some of it off so that I can write this post. My normal writing time was spent outside under the car.

This brings me to the value of having a few posts in the queue waiting anxiously to emerge. I have been thinking for the last couple of weeks that I would like to have 3 posts available for this because there are days when Doctor appointments and other things just prevent me from writing. Then along comes Carlos Velez at Conscious Me.com; with this guest post about how Pre writing is your friend. Struck a chord with me and over a few days the Pre-Writing Challenge was born. See my Pre-Writing challenge page for more info on how to join.

It would have been nice today to say, “I just am not going to write right now. I’ll post #7.” Didn’t happen but at the end of the challenge it will be so.

Thanks for being here!

Justin

Tag: car

When the car is paid off, it falls apart!

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