Mercury Retrograde, 2; cars, 0
So we're in Mercury Retrograde for the last time this year, and it seems to be hitting cars and travel plans hard. One of the positive ways of looking at MR is that it is a good time for wrapping up loose ends and resolving extant issues, or for proceeding with a little extra caution-- and I suppose that when it comes to winter travel and cars, that's never a bad thing. But does it have to be so damn expensive?
Friday night, gaius_de_mare hit a deer on his way home from work. His Volvo wagon is in unhappy shape-- the engine, transmission, and frame seem to be okay but the radiator is toast (and probably the A/C system too), the headlights and grill are smashed, and the hood looks like origami. He had to get towed home, because although the car would run, it overheated quickly without a working radiator. His insurance apparently won't cover it (they'll only cover accidents involving other vehicles/drivers, not collisions with uninsured deer), so he's going to go looking for a junkyard hood in good shape and try to fix it himself.
It was an 8-point buck, too. Made it out of the road but then collapsed in the front yard of the nearest house. Pity there was no way to bring it home, and eat venison for the rest of the winter.
Saturday night after ritual, I picked up gaius_de_mare to come join us at Mother Bear's for revels. While we were driving, my power steering went out, and I had to haul on the steering wheel to turn. We checked the power steering fluid the next morning, and the reservoir was empty, so we bought some new steering fluid and filled it up to the cold fill line. Started up the car, the fluid in the reservoir got sucked down into the system, so we added more fluid to the hot fill line and let it run for a bit, turning the wheel to work the steering system. Seemed okay, then we turned off the car and heard a bubbling noise-- the fluid had come back up and was overflowing out of the reservoir. What's more, it looked really weird: out of the bottle, power steering fluid is clear and viscous but liquidy; what was bubbling up was opaque, brownish, and sludgey. It almost looked like it had partially frozen, which it's not supposed to do. The steering never got any better with the additional fluid, either.
I'm supposed to drive to MD on Thursday, so I had to call around this morning to find a shop that could look at it today and hopefully have it finished this week. gaius_de_mare followed me in his truck, and we headed to a place where I'd gotten a brake job for my last car about 5 years ago; it was on south Rogers, further south from Josh's house, so it was sort of conveniently located. We got to where I remembered, and Google confirmed, that it was located, and there was nothing in the industrial park where I remembered it being except a gymnastics studio. I called them again and asked if they'd moved-- turns out they'd not only moved, they'd changed the name of their business, so I never would have known how to look for it. We found the new location and dropped the car off. I also asked them to look into the problem with my heat, but said that that wasn't as pressing a concern for me since it will still defrost my windshield and it gets warmish, just not hot. I got a call a little while ago with a diagnosis: one of the rack & pinion seals has gone bad, which is why it's leaking steering fluid. Unfortunately it's not a cheap repair, nor something I can put off and drive on to MD. Joy. On the bright side, they said the heat problem should probably be okay after backflushing the heater core, which is a lot cheaper and easier than replacing the heater core, which is what I was expecting them to tell me I needed. Also on the bright side, this place still offers a 10% discount on labor costs for students, so I'll save about $40 from that. It'll be done sometime tomorrow, which is honestly earlier than I was expecting, so I'm relieved that I won't have to wait till Thursday morning or something.
Friday night, gaius_de_mare hit a deer on his way home from work. His Volvo wagon is in unhappy shape-- the engine, transmission, and frame seem to be okay but the radiator is toast (and probably the A/C system too), the headlights and grill are smashed, and the hood looks like origami. He had to get towed home, because although the car would run, it overheated quickly without a working radiator. His insurance apparently won't cover it (they'll only cover accidents involving other vehicles/drivers, not collisions with uninsured deer), so he's going to go looking for a junkyard hood in good shape and try to fix it himself.
It was an 8-point buck, too. Made it out of the road but then collapsed in the front yard of the nearest house. Pity there was no way to bring it home, and eat venison for the rest of the winter.
Saturday night after ritual, I picked up gaius_de_mare to come join us at Mother Bear's for revels. While we were driving, my power steering went out, and I had to haul on the steering wheel to turn. We checked the power steering fluid the next morning, and the reservoir was empty, so we bought some new steering fluid and filled it up to the cold fill line. Started up the car, the fluid in the reservoir got sucked down into the system, so we added more fluid to the hot fill line and let it run for a bit, turning the wheel to work the steering system. Seemed okay, then we turned off the car and heard a bubbling noise-- the fluid had come back up and was overflowing out of the reservoir. What's more, it looked really weird: out of the bottle, power steering fluid is clear and viscous but liquidy; what was bubbling up was opaque, brownish, and sludgey. It almost looked like it had partially frozen, which it's not supposed to do. The steering never got any better with the additional fluid, either.
I'm supposed to drive to MD on Thursday, so I had to call around this morning to find a shop that could look at it today and hopefully have it finished this week. gaius_de_mare followed me in his truck, and we headed to a place where I'd gotten a brake job for my last car about 5 years ago; it was on south Rogers, further south from Josh's house, so it was sort of conveniently located. We got to where I remembered, and Google confirmed, that it was located, and there was nothing in the industrial park where I remembered it being except a gymnastics studio. I called them again and asked if they'd moved-- turns out they'd not only moved, they'd changed the name of their business, so I never would have known how to look for it. We found the new location and dropped the car off. I also asked them to look into the problem with my heat, but said that that wasn't as pressing a concern for me since it will still defrost my windshield and it gets warmish, just not hot. I got a call a little while ago with a diagnosis: one of the rack & pinion seals has gone bad, which is why it's leaking steering fluid. Unfortunately it's not a cheap repair, nor something I can put off and drive on to MD. Joy. On the bright side, they said the heat problem should probably be okay after backflushing the heater core, which is a lot cheaper and easier than replacing the heater core, which is what I was expecting them to tell me I needed. Also on the bright side, this place still offers a 10% discount on labor costs for students, so I'll save about $40 from that. It'll be done sometime tomorrow, which is honestly earlier than I was expecting, so I'm relieved that I won't have to wait till Thursday morning or something.