Busted

 Here's a little story that happened one day. It was a Friday workday and we had just gone out to lunch. On the way back to work, we were stopped at a red light. When it turns green, my friend goes to accelerate... and SNAP! Or like... CLUNK! Or maybe it was a SPROING!? Anyway, something underneath the car made a loud noise. And the acceleration was not happening. Gas pedal.... VROOM! No forward movement. The car... is busted.

On go the hazard lights, honking people behind us angrily zoop around us. When the light turns red again, fortunately there is no cross-traffic, so we jump out of the car and push it. Able to steer through the window, we guide the car off to the side of the road. One random stranger stops his car to see if we needed help pushing but by the time he got to us, we were already in this spot. The shifter is in "park" but the car still drifts forward. The emergency brake still works to keep us stopped. Is this "the end" for our car?

There was a call to State Farm insurance, since the car simply "broke" the insurance doesn't cover the repairs, but they will send out a tow truck. The phone call turned into a text message that turned into an app that selected options for towing. Out on the side of the road, I figure we could get a picture of the nearby nature while we wait, but honestly the tow truck guy got there very fast, so there was no time to relax. Relax? Are you kidding me? The car just broke!

The phone app asked where we wanted to car towed to. We really had no idea what would be best since car repair prices can vary wildly. Maybe it would be too expensive to repair, and we might wind up shopping for a new car immediately. One of the options was Mavis Discount Tires, and we've been there before. It was a national chain type of place so they probably had a "normal range" of prices which couldn't be outrageously high. And I remember the people working there were pretty nice.

I missed getting a picture of the car dropped off at Mavis, but it's not going anywhere and we needed a ride. They told us there was an Avis Rental not too far down the road, so we walked over. Avis did not have any cars available! But the nice lady there called a few other places and there was an Enterprise near where we work that had some cars for us, but nobody to pick us up, like Enterprise normally would. So we'd need a ride to get there...

A phone call back to work gets us someone who will drive out to pick us up. They might not know where Mavis is, but they'll probably find the Burger King. So we walk over there. There was a bit of delay while we waited for ohhh... about 45 minutes. During that time, State Farm calls us back to "see how we are doing" which was amazing. When we tell them we are on the way to get a rental car, they offer to call Enterprise and negotiate a good rate for us!

After a sheepish "you didn't forget about me?" call to work, someone came right away. Zoomed me over to Enterprise, where my rental car was waiting along with a $45 per day deal that the Enterprise guy said was nearly half of what it would have been without the help of State Farm. Yay State Farm! So there I was, Broken car, expensive rental replacement. This will be an interesting weekend, right?

Mavis called in the morning and told us the car had a broken Axel Rod, and sent us a pic. The repair would cost $1200 and they could fix it that day. That's a lot better than the blown transmission we were expecting, and a lot better than buying a whole new car. Our car has about 175,000 miles on it, so it's not expected to be lasting much longer, but the engine itself it still very quiet and we were hoping to get a little more time out of it.

We were going to drive the rental car around, since we went ahead and paid for it, might as well get some use out of it. While parked enjoying our McLunch, we notice it only had half a tank of gas. Hope they don't expect us to fill it up! We took this picture as a record in case we needed to show them later. While eating lunch, Mavis called and our car was fixed! I guess we don't get to drive around the rental afterall.

We called Enterprise to see if they would have someone available to drop us back off at the Mavis, and... they are closed! At 1pm on Saturday, and it was like... 1:10. Argh. Not open at all on Sunday. Enterprise dot com customer service said it would be cool to drop off the car and call them on Monday, so it makes us nervous that we'd get charged for Saturday AND Sunday but we still want to get rid of the rental. The nice awesome people at Mavis offer to follow us to Enterprise to drop of the rental. So here's the car back in the same spot it came from yesterday. I'll skip the tension and tell you that we did call on Monday, they did charge us for the two extra days, but promptly refunded us the difference.

Keys in the drop box! No getting them back after this. Moments later, after we get in our car to drive the nice guy from Mavis back, he asks us about this ABS sensor on the dashboard, which was NOT on before. AHH! We JUST dropped of the rental car! Would we need more repairs? We might be stranded again. A small moment of panic.

He said relax, it's just a sensor. The car is still drivable with that light on. It just detects if the wheel is spinning crazy to engage the Anti-Lock Braking System. He plugs the computer under the dashboard to verify what's the cause, and looks like we need a sensor replaced for another $80.

First he checked the sensor itself to see if he could just wiggle it or something, and we get a look under the car. See the nice and shiny new Axel Rod? Shouldn't it be made out of gold for what we paid for it? Haha. They aren't kidding about the salting of the roads up here and how it eats away at the undersides of the cars. He said that particular axel rod takes a lot of torque from the engine so it's rare but does happen to salty-exposed cars.

Circled here is the sensor that needed replacing. It's on the other wheel, it must have gone bad when the driver's side wheel broke. You can see the axel rod on this side looks much nicer and now it seems weird that the other one was so worn down. He suggested we eventually get this one replaced if we would be driving around for several more years, but I think we'll get a new car before that happens [knock on wood!] A brief visit the following Monday completed the repairs.

I forgot to mention this tow screw that we finally figured out what it was for. The amazing part is that we remembered where it was in the car when the tow truck guy asked if we had it. The little circle in the front bumper of the car is a removable panel that reveals a spot to screw this in, so the tow truck can lock it down. So if you have one of these things, make sure you remember where you put it! All together it was an expensive weekend but considering it could have been much worse, I suppose I shouldn't complain. Everybody involved was the best, friendliest, most helpful they could have been. So at least that part we can feel good about.