My Car Lives Again
The problem was the starter motor, so it was a minor repair. Given a lift and the starter, I could have easily replaced it in an hour. Instead, if cost me almost $250 for parts and an hour of labor. Not bad for a car repair, but about $250 more than I wanted to pay. It also took half of Friday to get it fixed, because they had to get the part, other people were in line first, and so on and so forth. Ugh.
On the bright side, the tow truck driver was great. He took one look at the low ceiling in our garage and decided he didn't want to tow out of it if he could avoid it. He diagnosed the problem immediately from my description and verified it by tapping the starter with a rubber mallet - the car started up after that. Apparently if the rest of the electrical system is working and the engine is not turning over at all it is almost always the starter or solenoid.
This result makes sense - the starter is an electric motor. When it fails, the cause is often the brushes in the motor resting on a spot where they no longer make proper contact. If you jar the starter, it will then work because the brush moved slightly, out of the bad spot. Of course, how many times the car will start again before the next failure is purely random, with the odds dependent on how big the worn spot is in the motor. Also, of course, smacking the starter with a hammer can cause damage to it, so it isn't recommended that you do it repeatedly. After calling my dad to double check my understanding, I got it fixed.
Looks like I have now used my first day of PTO at my new job. I could definitely have found something more fun to do with that day of PTO. Amusingly, I was told by a friend that my boss didn't check his voicemail, so he went "Hey, where's Jamey?" at the 11 o'clock meeting. I had left him two messages (the first around 6:30 AM) and called him 3 times on his work number, so I did what I could to contact him. From what I hear he didn't have any issues with it, but I'll talk to him on Monday. I think that I'm going to email him next time as I know he'll check that.
On the bright side, the tow truck driver was great. He took one look at the low ceiling in our garage and decided he didn't want to tow out of it if he could avoid it. He diagnosed the problem immediately from my description and verified it by tapping the starter with a rubber mallet - the car started up after that. Apparently if the rest of the electrical system is working and the engine is not turning over at all it is almost always the starter or solenoid.
This result makes sense - the starter is an electric motor. When it fails, the cause is often the brushes in the motor resting on a spot where they no longer make proper contact. If you jar the starter, it will then work because the brush moved slightly, out of the bad spot. Of course, how many times the car will start again before the next failure is purely random, with the odds dependent on how big the worn spot is in the motor. Also, of course, smacking the starter with a hammer can cause damage to it, so it isn't recommended that you do it repeatedly. After calling my dad to double check my understanding, I got it fixed.
Looks like I have now used my first day of PTO at my new job. I could definitely have found something more fun to do with that day of PTO. Amusingly, I was told by a friend that my boss didn't check his voicemail, so he went "Hey, where's Jamey?" at the 11 o'clock meeting. I had left him two messages (the first around 6:30 AM) and called him 3 times on his work number, so I did what I could to contact him. From what I hear he didn't have any issues with it, but I'll talk to him on Monday. I think that I'm going to email him next time as I know he'll check that.