Thursday, March 26, 2009

Car troubles

I am bored at work right now, so I figured I would tell you the story of how my tranny went. No not a transexual.

Saturday I was going to go over to my Sister in laws because the man was working until midnight. I take the exit of a pretty busy highway that ends in a stop sign. I get to the stop sign, look to the left and hit the gas to continue. The engine revved and wouldn't go forward. Good thing the stop sign is on a hill because I was able to coast down the hill and pull over to the side.

So I put it in park and turn the car off and try to restart in just in case the gears were stuck. Nothing.
So I call the man to let him know. Then the sister in law texts me that they are ordering Chinese and where the hell am I. I tell her my car died and I have to call AAA. First I call my brother to see if he has any suggestions to get my car into gear. He had a few suggestions, none worked. So I called AAA and waited. the Sister in law came to sit with me for a bit. After an hour she left to go eat. Then my cell phone died. Then the hazard lights and the radio started dipping, so I had to turn the accessories and the hazard off. Tow truck showed up after about and hour and a half or so.

I had it towed to VW because I was pissed that I just had the car in for the 80k mile service that had just cost me $900. The dealership was closed because it was 8 at that point, so I had to leave it and fill out and envelope and put my keys in a lock box.

Now I have to get a ride home, but my phone is dead. Thankfully the driver let me use his and I call the sister in law to come and get me. She puts the other sister in law on the phone who starts with "ok so where are you and how do I get there". At that point I didn't want to play the direction game so I said never mind I will call my parents. I call the folks and since I was using the tow truck drivers phone they didn't answer cause they didn't recognize the number! The driver asked how far I lived from the dealer. I said about 3 minutes and he said ok then I'll drive you home. So I tipped him $20. Cause otherwise I would have been waiting in the cold or walking home and I wouldn't have been a happy camper.

So I get a call at 7:45 Monday morning from VW. They got the car and would start the diagnostic.
3 hours later he said they were leaning towards the transmission. But they had one more test. And asked if I was the original owner. I said yeah I was. He says well there is a chance that this could be a warranty on the transmission. But I have to check a few things and I will let you know. At this point it's a glimmer of hope. But I try not to get so excited because I checked on other vw's and they have a 5yr/60k on their transmissions. At any rate I wait some more.

At 3:30 I call them because it has been 3 hours and I want to know what the hell I am in store for. Because at this point I am preparing to have to go car shopping. Because my car is only worth $5k at this point and I am not putting thousands of dollars into it. So of course I get the voicemail because VW doesn't answer the damn phone. He actually calls back in 10 min or so and says that they can't say the transmission is shot until the warranty guy looks at it but it's the transmission. And the good news is that it has a 100k mile warranty. And since I only have 78k miles on it, it is totally covered! YAY JOY! So he said I should get it back by Friday!

So I have been driving the truck for most of the week. Today we needed to rent a car cause the man is working late and I am not riding my bike in the rain. And he won't ride the motorcycle in the rain. So today I have a nissan versa.

Good times