$40 repair or $1,400 repair?
So the mighty Sienna Minivan started to have major problems a few weeks ago: The engine was misfiring, losing power, and throwing all sorts of bad errors including the BLINKING ENGINE light. Which is bad.
After checking the car a bit I found that it does have a timing belt and we haven't replaced it in well over 150,000 miles. You're supposed to do it at 60k miles and well I never did it. Oh well. Thinking that it had skipped a tooth I brought it to the mechanic.
Well, $1,400 later the car was back with a new water pump, new idlers, new accessory belts, new water hoses, and a new belt. I told them to save the old belt, checked it, and knew that wasn't the problem as all the teeth were there. Oh great. Sure enough the next day the problems were back, but at least I knew the engine was not going to blow up.
A bit of research and thought led me to the fact that the car has variable valve timing which is controlled by a pair of solenoids that regulate engine oil and a pair of sensors to check the timing. Since the backfiring was all on the back bank of the engine I knew it was either the sensor, the control valve, or the whole VVT cam system.
So for $40 I bought a new valve, popped it in today, car is now totally fine. Technically I could have done this in the beginning, but eventually the belt would break and that would be it for the car. So now we have a fully serviced 2001 Sienna that should last another decade instead of going out and buying a super cool Tesla.
Whee? Ok. Worth it. But I could easily see sinking another thousand or two in mechanics to find this problem. That is why I think that learning the basics of fixing cars is the most valuable skill someone can learn. Because this is the first $$$ I have put into that minivan since we bought it 9 years and 120k miles ago.....
Good deal.
After checking the car a bit I found that it does have a timing belt and we haven't replaced it in well over 150,000 miles. You're supposed to do it at 60k miles and well I never did it. Oh well. Thinking that it had skipped a tooth I brought it to the mechanic.
Well, $1,400 later the car was back with a new water pump, new idlers, new accessory belts, new water hoses, and a new belt. I told them to save the old belt, checked it, and knew that wasn't the problem as all the teeth were there. Oh great. Sure enough the next day the problems were back, but at least I knew the engine was not going to blow up.
A bit of research and thought led me to the fact that the car has variable valve timing which is controlled by a pair of solenoids that regulate engine oil and a pair of sensors to check the timing. Since the backfiring was all on the back bank of the engine I knew it was either the sensor, the control valve, or the whole VVT cam system.
So for $40 I bought a new valve, popped it in today, car is now totally fine. Technically I could have done this in the beginning, but eventually the belt would break and that would be it for the car. So now we have a fully serviced 2001 Sienna that should last another decade instead of going out and buying a super cool Tesla.
Whee? Ok. Worth it. But I could easily see sinking another thousand or two in mechanics to find this problem. That is why I think that learning the basics of fixing cars is the most valuable skill someone can learn. Because this is the first $$$ I have put into that minivan since we bought it 9 years and 120k miles ago.....
Good deal.