Well it has been quite awhile since I have had access to the internet, which would explain my lack of blogging for the past month. And now I have to make up for the lost time and fill everyone in on our lives over the last month. This may turn out to be a very long post…be warned.
As you should know, by reading my last post, I am now out of work. My last day was nice, I got some cake and lots of cookies, and didn’t do many work related things. A good way to end I think.
Now I have to back-track for a minute before coming back up to present day. We bought our most recent car, the 4Runner, almost one year ago. When we bought it, we had told the guy we were buying it from that it was okay that it was ugly looking and that it didn’t have to be the fastest best car out there, because it’s main purpose was going to be to take me to work and back and everyday, which was approximately 1-2 miles away. Just far enough that it would still be walk-able, but was really annoying to walk and would be much more convenient if driving was an option.
Apparently, we were more accurate with this statement than we had thought, or hoped for. When we said those words we must have sealed the deal. Or maybe our car just decided to hold us to our word, because the very next day after my last day of work, our car decided to die. It no longer was needed to take me to work! So why keep working?! I guess. And this time it died really hard. From all the symptoms, including blowing tons of white smoke everywhere and having troubles starting, we deduced that we had a blown head gasket, and possibly, though hopefully not, a cracked head. Or two. Because we have two heads. Imagine that. So we don’t know which one is bad, so guess what? We get to replace both.
So now we have a dead car, and poor Jarom still has to walk to work and 2:30 in the AM for a few miles. We now live further from campus than we did when we originally bought the car….
So I started calling around to all the mechanics I could find in the area to get quotes for how much they would charge to replace the head gasket. The absolute lowest anyone would say was $1200, and that’s only IF absolutely nothing else was wrong, which isn’t very likely. It was running more up in the $2500 range. Well, seeing as this cost is more than we paid for the entire car itself, it’s hard to justify spending that much on the dang thing. Especially, since I just lost my job and we have limited amounts of funds anyway, it was definitely NOT in the plans to spend a huge chunk of our survival money on the car.
So, what did we decide? To try to fix it ourselves! And that has been our major project for the past month. Neither of us really knows what we’re doing, but with the help of a manual, some parents, and some advice from people in the ward, we have been making progress slowly but surely. The most frustrating part is when you know what you need to do next, and it’s just a matter of taking some stuff off, and you just can’t get the stupid bolt off because it’s rusted in or what not! That’s what’s been holding us up the most is having ridiculously stubborn bolts that take days to get off. Oh and also, that the head gasket itself does not cost very much at all. It’s just all the crappy labor that costs so much because mechanics think they can charge hundreds of dollars per hour. Don’t we all wish we made that much?
Oh here’s another detail to the story. Our apartment complex doesn’t allow us to work on our cars in their parking lots, so we have to park it on the street to do anything. So we did. And while it’s been sitting there, someone must have decided it would be really fun to bash in our driver’s side window, because that’s what they did. Now it is ghetto-ly (yes, that is a word) taped over with a garbage bag, and we can’t even fix it because half the engine is no longer in the engine.. Ha. We’re just glad they didn’t take anything. In fact, I’m pretty sure they weren’t trying to steal anything because they didn’t even bother opening the door. I guess they just got enough kicks out of breaking something instead. While there really was not a whole lot of stuff with worth to it inside, we did have some tools in there that they could have taken. We now store those tools inside the house.
So in good news, we are getting closer, but still don’t know if we have a cracked head or not. If that turns out to be the case, I don’t think we’ll be fixing it. So the actual good news is that even if worst comes to worse and we can’t fix this car, we only have a couple more weeks of being carless. Jarom’s parents recently bought a new car for themselves, so they will be leaving us with one of their old ones! YAY! They are coming down on the 23rd or so, then the whole family will be going up to Yellowstone Partk over the 24th weekend, since ya know, it IS a holiday here, and then they will be flying home the next week, leaving us with a working, reliable car. For hopefully awhile. That would be nice. Now we just need to work on getting jobs!
Oh, and before I switch gears completely, let me inform you on some of the things we have discovered about our car since diving into its guts. These things will fall under two categories: things that the previous owners did that shows they were morons, and things that McAuto did (our previous mechanic) that shows they are morons and will never be allowed to touch our car again. I would recommend to everyone to NOT go to McAuto for car repairs. Personally. It’s right behind the DI.
Ok, first, the owner list. This one is not too long. First off, Jarom has been thinking for quite a few months now that either our timing is off, or that our injectors aren’t firing properly for some reason. After opening it up, we have confirmed that in fact BOTH are true. We have a total of 6 fuel injectors. However, only 5 of them are plugged in. In fact, only 5 of them even HAVE plugs! One of them is COMPLETLEY MISSING the plug, rendering it useless. There are just some bare wires hanging out with nowhere to go! We can tell from numerous things that our engine has been opened up before. This being one of them, and apparently our previous owners didn’t think it was important to keep all the wires connected to something…anything. So yes, that would be a good reason why all of our injectors aren’t firing correctly, and would definitely make the car run better if we can get our hands on a plug. Still haven’t called around for that one yet, I’m hoping the Toyota dealership will have it. Ok, so on to the timing now. We have to get everything lined up on the timing belt before we can take the belt off. This consists of 3 pulleys and the rotor. So far, we have only been able to get two of the three pulleys lined up, with the rotor. And one of these pulleys is off one tooth, which isn’t a whole lot, but it is enough to make the car have problems. However, the THIRD pully, down at the crankshaft, is COMPLETELY OFF! Like, it’s so off that they must have installed it upside down or something. Which no one even knew was possible, but it must be! Because the little notch thing to line up isn’t even visible when everything else is lined up. It’s completely turned around on the bottom. And no one knows what to do with this. So I guess we’ll just be taking it off and worrying about lining it up later when we put it back.
And now, the Mechanic list. Did I mention this was going to be a long post? A few months ago we brought our car into the shop to take care of its power problems, and I think the check engine light may have been on. Our car basically has always had problems going up hills. It tends to not like hills. (Which, after opening it up and finding the injector problem and timing problem, NO WONDER it has no power!). This mechanic decided it was a spark plug wire problem, as well as a vacuum leak problem. So they installed all brand new spark plugs, wires, and fixed our leak. How did they fix the leak? Did they replace the tube that had a massive hole in it? Did they even offer or ask us if we wanted them to just replace it, for like 30 bucks!? No, instead they used electrical tape to tape off the hole. Well, that lasted all of two days. After which we again lost power and investigated ourselves, to find a crappy job of taping that had fallen off so the hole was now exposed again. So we went and bought the new tube ourselves and fixed it in like 5 minutes. Why didn’t they do that again? On top of this, our check engine light came back on at this time. And we thought we could hear something rattling around inside the engine. So we pop the hood, look around, and find a few disconcerting things that were put together so horribly bad. First off, we had just recently replaced our distributer cap, so it was brand new. It now had a dent in it. Which means they either hit it or took it off and dropped it. Thanks a lot, but not the biggest deal. However, when we decided to take this cap off…..we found a screw completely LOOSE and banging around inside the cap. They just hadn’t screwed it back in! This could have caused bad damage to our car!!! And it was just bouncing around inside! At this time we also found one of the spark plug wires hadn’t been plugged back in. Yeah, it was just sitting there. Oh man. So after fixing up after their mistakes, guess what? Our check engine light turned off and stayed off! That was all that was wrong with it was that they were morons and sloppy with their work! Oh man. And it gets better. Since recently diving into our car, and finding out the TRUE reasons for our power issues (since they quickly returned after getting it “fixed” by McAuto), we have also found another sign of their laziness, horrible attention to detail, or whatever you want to call it. When we took the spark plugs out, we noticed that one of them looked awfully a lot like the ones we had put in, BEFORE taking it to McAuto. They were supposed to have replaced all of them. The other five looked new….but this one sure didn’t. Well, yesterday, we found that 6th new sparkplug they never installed! It was just hiding down in a small crack in the engine. So what, they dropped one of the sparkplugs down into our engine, couldn’t get it out, so just didn’t bother changing out one of ours and left the dropped on in there, and CHARGED us for it because, after all, they did GIVE it to us since it came home in our engine…technically. Oh geez.
Anyway, all of that is in the past now and we are now just focusing on trying to fix it.
The only other thing I have to report on today is that Jarom’s birthday has passed since I was able to last write. I decided to explore my creativity this year by making him a Transformers cake. For everyone who has no life and has been able to read this far, I would like you to meet Optimus Prime.
Haha, I know he doesn’t look that great, but it was my first! And I definitely learned some stuff. Also, I have started watching the new show on TLC called Cake Boss, and I have learned some things from that too. I will definitely need to try using fondant for the icing from now on, it looks much smoother than this stuff does.
Anyway, until next time! Who knows when that will be. I still do not have internet access at home, and I’m sitting on campus right now using theirs while Jarom is working. It is 4:30 in the AM right now. I need to go home and go to sleep.
As you should know, by reading my last post, I am now out of work. My last day was nice, I got some cake and lots of cookies, and didn’t do many work related things. A good way to end I think.
Now I have to back-track for a minute before coming back up to present day. We bought our most recent car, the 4Runner, almost one year ago. When we bought it, we had told the guy we were buying it from that it was okay that it was ugly looking and that it didn’t have to be the fastest best car out there, because it’s main purpose was going to be to take me to work and back and everyday, which was approximately 1-2 miles away. Just far enough that it would still be walk-able, but was really annoying to walk and would be much more convenient if driving was an option.
Apparently, we were more accurate with this statement than we had thought, or hoped for. When we said those words we must have sealed the deal. Or maybe our car just decided to hold us to our word, because the very next day after my last day of work, our car decided to die. It no longer was needed to take me to work! So why keep working?! I guess. And this time it died really hard. From all the symptoms, including blowing tons of white smoke everywhere and having troubles starting, we deduced that we had a blown head gasket, and possibly, though hopefully not, a cracked head. Or two. Because we have two heads. Imagine that. So we don’t know which one is bad, so guess what? We get to replace both.
So now we have a dead car, and poor Jarom still has to walk to work and 2:30 in the AM for a few miles. We now live further from campus than we did when we originally bought the car….
So I started calling around to all the mechanics I could find in the area to get quotes for how much they would charge to replace the head gasket. The absolute lowest anyone would say was $1200, and that’s only IF absolutely nothing else was wrong, which isn’t very likely. It was running more up in the $2500 range. Well, seeing as this cost is more than we paid for the entire car itself, it’s hard to justify spending that much on the dang thing. Especially, since I just lost my job and we have limited amounts of funds anyway, it was definitely NOT in the plans to spend a huge chunk of our survival money on the car.
So, what did we decide? To try to fix it ourselves! And that has been our major project for the past month. Neither of us really knows what we’re doing, but with the help of a manual, some parents, and some advice from people in the ward, we have been making progress slowly but surely. The most frustrating part is when you know what you need to do next, and it’s just a matter of taking some stuff off, and you just can’t get the stupid bolt off because it’s rusted in or what not! That’s what’s been holding us up the most is having ridiculously stubborn bolts that take days to get off. Oh and also, that the head gasket itself does not cost very much at all. It’s just all the crappy labor that costs so much because mechanics think they can charge hundreds of dollars per hour. Don’t we all wish we made that much?
Oh here’s another detail to the story. Our apartment complex doesn’t allow us to work on our cars in their parking lots, so we have to park it on the street to do anything. So we did. And while it’s been sitting there, someone must have decided it would be really fun to bash in our driver’s side window, because that’s what they did. Now it is ghetto-ly (yes, that is a word) taped over with a garbage bag, and we can’t even fix it because half the engine is no longer in the engine.. Ha. We’re just glad they didn’t take anything. In fact, I’m pretty sure they weren’t trying to steal anything because they didn’t even bother opening the door. I guess they just got enough kicks out of breaking something instead. While there really was not a whole lot of stuff with worth to it inside, we did have some tools in there that they could have taken. We now store those tools inside the house.
So in good news, we are getting closer, but still don’t know if we have a cracked head or not. If that turns out to be the case, I don’t think we’ll be fixing it. So the actual good news is that even if worst comes to worse and we can’t fix this car, we only have a couple more weeks of being carless. Jarom’s parents recently bought a new car for themselves, so they will be leaving us with one of their old ones! YAY! They are coming down on the 23rd or so, then the whole family will be going up to Yellowstone Partk over the 24th weekend, since ya know, it IS a holiday here, and then they will be flying home the next week, leaving us with a working, reliable car. For hopefully awhile. That would be nice. Now we just need to work on getting jobs!
Oh, and before I switch gears completely, let me inform you on some of the things we have discovered about our car since diving into its guts. These things will fall under two categories: things that the previous owners did that shows they were morons, and things that McAuto did (our previous mechanic) that shows they are morons and will never be allowed to touch our car again. I would recommend to everyone to NOT go to McAuto for car repairs. Personally. It’s right behind the DI.
Ok, first, the owner list. This one is not too long. First off, Jarom has been thinking for quite a few months now that either our timing is off, or that our injectors aren’t firing properly for some reason. After opening it up, we have confirmed that in fact BOTH are true. We have a total of 6 fuel injectors. However, only 5 of them are plugged in. In fact, only 5 of them even HAVE plugs! One of them is COMPLETLEY MISSING the plug, rendering it useless. There are just some bare wires hanging out with nowhere to go! We can tell from numerous things that our engine has been opened up before. This being one of them, and apparently our previous owners didn’t think it was important to keep all the wires connected to something…anything. So yes, that would be a good reason why all of our injectors aren’t firing correctly, and would definitely make the car run better if we can get our hands on a plug. Still haven’t called around for that one yet, I’m hoping the Toyota dealership will have it. Ok, so on to the timing now. We have to get everything lined up on the timing belt before we can take the belt off. This consists of 3 pulleys and the rotor. So far, we have only been able to get two of the three pulleys lined up, with the rotor. And one of these pulleys is off one tooth, which isn’t a whole lot, but it is enough to make the car have problems. However, the THIRD pully, down at the crankshaft, is COMPLETELY OFF! Like, it’s so off that they must have installed it upside down or something. Which no one even knew was possible, but it must be! Because the little notch thing to line up isn’t even visible when everything else is lined up. It’s completely turned around on the bottom. And no one knows what to do with this. So I guess we’ll just be taking it off and worrying about lining it up later when we put it back.
And now, the Mechanic list. Did I mention this was going to be a long post? A few months ago we brought our car into the shop to take care of its power problems, and I think the check engine light may have been on. Our car basically has always had problems going up hills. It tends to not like hills. (Which, after opening it up and finding the injector problem and timing problem, NO WONDER it has no power!). This mechanic decided it was a spark plug wire problem, as well as a vacuum leak problem. So they installed all brand new spark plugs, wires, and fixed our leak. How did they fix the leak? Did they replace the tube that had a massive hole in it? Did they even offer or ask us if we wanted them to just replace it, for like 30 bucks!? No, instead they used electrical tape to tape off the hole. Well, that lasted all of two days. After which we again lost power and investigated ourselves, to find a crappy job of taping that had fallen off so the hole was now exposed again. So we went and bought the new tube ourselves and fixed it in like 5 minutes. Why didn’t they do that again? On top of this, our check engine light came back on at this time. And we thought we could hear something rattling around inside the engine. So we pop the hood, look around, and find a few disconcerting things that were put together so horribly bad. First off, we had just recently replaced our distributer cap, so it was brand new. It now had a dent in it. Which means they either hit it or took it off and dropped it. Thanks a lot, but not the biggest deal. However, when we decided to take this cap off…..we found a screw completely LOOSE and banging around inside the cap. They just hadn’t screwed it back in! This could have caused bad damage to our car!!! And it was just bouncing around inside! At this time we also found one of the spark plug wires hadn’t been plugged back in. Yeah, it was just sitting there. Oh man. So after fixing up after their mistakes, guess what? Our check engine light turned off and stayed off! That was all that was wrong with it was that they were morons and sloppy with their work! Oh man. And it gets better. Since recently diving into our car, and finding out the TRUE reasons for our power issues (since they quickly returned after getting it “fixed” by McAuto), we have also found another sign of their laziness, horrible attention to detail, or whatever you want to call it. When we took the spark plugs out, we noticed that one of them looked awfully a lot like the ones we had put in, BEFORE taking it to McAuto. They were supposed to have replaced all of them. The other five looked new….but this one sure didn’t. Well, yesterday, we found that 6th new sparkplug they never installed! It was just hiding down in a small crack in the engine. So what, they dropped one of the sparkplugs down into our engine, couldn’t get it out, so just didn’t bother changing out one of ours and left the dropped on in there, and CHARGED us for it because, after all, they did GIVE it to us since it came home in our engine…technically. Oh geez.
Anyway, all of that is in the past now and we are now just focusing on trying to fix it.
The only other thing I have to report on today is that Jarom’s birthday has passed since I was able to last write. I decided to explore my creativity this year by making him a Transformers cake. For everyone who has no life and has been able to read this far, I would like you to meet Optimus Prime.
Haha, I know he doesn’t look that great, but it was my first! And I definitely learned some stuff. Also, I have started watching the new show on TLC called Cake Boss, and I have learned some things from that too. I will definitely need to try using fondant for the icing from now on, it looks much smoother than this stuff does.
Anyway, until next time! Who knows when that will be. I still do not have internet access at home, and I’m sitting on campus right now using theirs while Jarom is working. It is 4:30 in the AM right now. I need to go home and go to sleep.
Comments
Also, the cake looks amazing! fondant is the best though. Lovely to hear what is going on with you guys!!! Miss you!