Nothing's wrong with it. That'll be a hundred bucks.

[elfs]

The Beast and the Blessing

Well, I got the car back from the dealer. It cost me $130 overall for them to say, "We don't know what's going on." The mechanic said that ran it with diagnostics on and the computer recorded "thousands of misfires," but nothing else within the car seemed to wrong; it ran smoothly for a car with 130,000 miles on it and he was impressed that I'm still get 30MPG out of the sucker.

They reset the computer and told me to put a better quality of gas into it, along with gas cleaner. "Maybe the valves are just dirty. If they're not, you might need a head rebuild, but probably not. Not at 130,000 miles." Great. The Philips 76 next to the airport, the one closest to Norwescon, notorious for being obscenely expensive already, is at $3.83 a gallon. They also did the oil change and inspection, and even changed out the nitrogen in the tires for regular air. And they gave me a $20 break on labor costs even though I forgot to bring in the coupon.

(As an aside, did you hear Bush say yesterday, "If you're worried about three dollar gasoline," and when one of the reporters told him it was closer to $4, he said he'd heard it was high but not that it was getting that bad. Must be nice to have that motorcade. His spokesperson, Dana Perino, you know, the one who'd never heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis, insisted the President was in touch with reality. Thoth and Osiris, what kind of country do we have when a White House flack has to come out and insist to the press that the President is in touch with reality?)

This morning, though, Gladys The Goddess of Parking Spaces smiled upon me, giving me one of the five free parking spaces in front of my company offices. What luck! This is the second time I've gotten a free space in the five years I've been at this darned company. Admittedy, I drive only once or twice a week, but it feels like a blessing anyway.

(I fully expect to receive a nastygram from Ford Motors. The look and feel of a Ford is Ford's intellectual property, and they have asserted that showing a photo of your own car on your blog is a violation of their trademark.)

Comments

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

What on earth do they mean by a "misfire"?

Let's assume a 4-cylinder, 4 stroke, engine running at 1000 rpm for the test. Each cylinder fires once in two engine revolutions, so you get 2000 firings a minute.

I suspect they mean that's there's some raggedness of ignition timing, rather than actual failures to fire. And I'm too far behind the curve to suggest what might be wrong. The usual problems and solutions that come to mind tend to be pointless when a computer is using various sensors to control the timing.

Yeah, trademark law sounds to be getting nasty in America.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

The way the guy described it, he said that the valves are recording failure-to-close on one cycle, so the plug does not fire on the next cycle, but the valves do seem to recover quickly. Since the problem mostly manifests itself when the gas tank is nearly empty, he suggests that it's probably just crap in the tank working its way out, and that I should just use gas-liner cleaner for the next 3,000 miles or so.

[mg4h.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Do you often run the car till the tank is mostly empty, then refill it? If there's sediment in the bottom of the tank, you're more likely to get that stirred up and stuffed through the engine that way.

I'm not supposed to let my 21-year-old car get down below 1/4 of a tank for this very reason.

And, that's an Escort Wagon, isn't it? I have one of those too, a '99. The first one worked till we blew a piston, and I'm still sad about that. The replacement is a twin to the old one, so we called it Henery :)

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm bad about not filling it until the "low fuel" light comes on.

And yeah, it's an Escort Wagon. We bought the '97 because it has a reputation for being such a workhorse, and it really is. Amazing long-term survival record, which is why I'm surprised you blew one up.

[mg4h.livejournal.com]

Pure bad luck. There was a very minor fault in the piston shaft from when it was forged, and after 137K miles it finally snapped, stuffing itself at force up through the camshaft and the sparkplug, shearing them off and making a big hole in the engine. My garage says it's one of those one-in-a-million things, and undetectable till it blows up.

We decided against replacing the engine, then ended up getting a completely different '99 with 19.5K miles on it. And laughed a lot at the garage when I drove up with it, because it really is a twin to the old car.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

If the computer is sensing that valves aren't quite closing, I'd be womndering what sort of gap they're detecting. What sort of crud can get through the fuel system, and yet stop a valve from properly closing?

Anyway, cleaning the fuel system is going to increase the amount of crud. Don't go driving across any deserts/

[phoenix14159.livejournal.com]

I've had a number of mechanics whose opinions I trusted tell me that Chevron gas really is superior to other brands; when we use anything else, we can tell the difference in how our buggy drives. You can get the Techron additive to put in the tank with other gas.

We also found that it's much happier on plus instead of regular; the positive of that is that the higher octane gives us slightly better gas mileage, so it ends up being a wash if not a small win.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Interesting; Chevron plus is what the mechanic told me I should use. I guess I'll listen.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

My '95 Toyota Corolla does pretty good with '76 gas, but I did get better mileage when I was filling it with Chevron.

[bldrnrpdx.livejournal.com]

FWIW, my sister, who drives a 97 Accord, only gets Chevron for similar reasons. Some friends say similar things about it. So yeah, many good references for Chevron.

[gromm.livejournal.com]

notorious for being obscenely expensive already, is at $3.83 a gallon.

Americans don't know what obscenely expensive gas is. The last time I looked, it was $1.18 a litre here. If I filter that through the first internet metric-to-US gallons filter that comes up, then through XE.com, I come up with $4.543 USD per US gallon. And Canadian gas is still cheap compared to Europe, where it's roughly double what we pay.

But I don't drive, so *shrug*.

[lovingboth]

About £1 / litre in the UK now. Most of that is tax.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

I've heard it as "mama squat, mama squat, find for me a parking spot". And then you pay her by making a pun at the very next opportunity, the stinkier the better.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

re gas prices

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

I've found that the '76 next to Trader Joes (1st street & 160th in Burien) is consistently the cheapest in the area. Though if you go a little further North the Fred Meyer's has gas that's generally about 5-10 cents cheaper than that even (I'm not sure if their quality is the same though).