Another day, another challenge
It started out as a perfectly ordinary Sunday morning. I got up, dressed for church, grabbed a cold beverage on the way out the door, and headed on down the road.
I got to the end of the road, turned onto the main drag, got less than a hundred yards when, as I was shifting into third gear, there was an ominous "clunk" from my drivetrain and my engine died. Wouldn't let me pop the clutch to restart it, no--it died. The engine stalled, the power steering died with it, and I just barely managed to wrestle it halfway across the nearest driveway before it quit altogether. And wouldn't restart.
Oh, it's trying to start: I'm getting noises that tells me the battery is trying to crank it. There's half a tank of gas; that isn't the problem. I'm guessing something in the drivetrain has gone poof, based on how it conked out, and two other facts: My car has upwards of a quarter of a million miles on it, and two, my extensive (and expensive!) experience with imported cars.
On the whole, I've found my Honda and my previous Subaru to be reliable in the extreme, but they tend to be somewhat over-engineered. One, they overrode things so that you *can't* start it up and limp home with it, and two, it's *never* just a part that needs to be replaced, no, it's a unit. Like, instead of a $20 speedometer cable, it needs a a $200 "sensor bundle". Still, considering I've had this beast for something like ten years now, and it's a 1990---I've had remarkably few problems.
It remains to be seen if this is going to be the killer. If it's going to cost more than a couple hundred dollars to fix it, I may end up looking for a replacement vehicle. And either way, it's going to be a few more weeks before I can do anything, even get it diagnosed.
I got J to come and get me and use her AAA to tow the beast to my house (less than a mile). Of course, she was at church with her phone off, so I spent two hours sitting there awaiting a call back. It was okay, though. It wasn't horribly warm, I had the aforementioned chilled beverage with me (diet Sunkist orange, yummy!) and a steno pad, so I whiled away the time scribbling.
I'm surprising my self with how calmly I've taken this development. If it had happened three months ago, I would've had a total meltdown and walked into oncoming traffic. Since I have a job---a work from home job!---I'm not massively screwed. Yes, it's an inconvenience; I'm going to have to figure out the fine points of the local public transportation to get to my meetings at the library this week---and to do any shopping until I can get back on the road---but I don't feel like the sky is falling. And that's huge.
.
I got to the end of the road, turned onto the main drag, got less than a hundred yards when, as I was shifting into third gear, there was an ominous "clunk" from my drivetrain and my engine died. Wouldn't let me pop the clutch to restart it, no--it died. The engine stalled, the power steering died with it, and I just barely managed to wrestle it halfway across the nearest driveway before it quit altogether. And wouldn't restart.
Oh, it's trying to start: I'm getting noises that tells me the battery is trying to crank it. There's half a tank of gas; that isn't the problem. I'm guessing something in the drivetrain has gone poof, based on how it conked out, and two other facts: My car has upwards of a quarter of a million miles on it, and two, my extensive (and expensive!) experience with imported cars.
On the whole, I've found my Honda and my previous Subaru to be reliable in the extreme, but they tend to be somewhat over-engineered. One, they overrode things so that you *can't* start it up and limp home with it, and two, it's *never* just a part that needs to be replaced, no, it's a unit. Like, instead of a $20 speedometer cable, it needs a a $200 "sensor bundle". Still, considering I've had this beast for something like ten years now, and it's a 1990---I've had remarkably few problems.
It remains to be seen if this is going to be the killer. If it's going to cost more than a couple hundred dollars to fix it, I may end up looking for a replacement vehicle. And either way, it's going to be a few more weeks before I can do anything, even get it diagnosed.
I got J to come and get me and use her AAA to tow the beast to my house (less than a mile). Of course, she was at church with her phone off, so I spent two hours sitting there awaiting a call back. It was okay, though. It wasn't horribly warm, I had the aforementioned chilled beverage with me (diet Sunkist orange, yummy!) and a steno pad, so I whiled away the time scribbling.
I'm surprising my self with how calmly I've taken this development. If it had happened three months ago, I would've had a total meltdown and walked into oncoming traffic. Since I have a job---a work from home job!---I'm not massively screwed. Yes, it's an inconvenience; I'm going to have to figure out the fine points of the local public transportation to get to my meetings at the library this week---and to do any shopping until I can get back on the road---but I don't feel like the sky is falling. And that's huge.
.