Charlie-in-the-Box

I have a new Charlie-in-the-Box, and this one is in the form of a ’97 Hyundai Accent. I have been looking for a cheap, economical second car for months. I didn’t really want to spend more than maybe $1500. My only requirements were that it was rot-free, mechanically sound, and standard transmission. Tall order, I know, but such examples do exist. I started first by searching solely for Hondas and Toyotas; having owned both I was reasonably confident in their durability. Well, gas prices being that they are, people who are selling Hondas and Toyotas know exactly what they have and can command pretty much any price they want. Buying in the wrong period of a market is my shtick; not something I do consciously, but subconsciously most definitely. I was striking out or losing out left and right.

The choice came down to a ’93 Mazda Protégé or a ’97 Hyundai Accent. Though attractive, the Mazda was more than I wanted to spend, and judging by the 50 Vanillaroma air fresheners that showed up in the interior photos, it appeared the owner smoked. A LOT. I don’t smoke anymore, so I have no desire to own a car that smells like a litter box, because that means I’ll always smell like a litter box as well. A Vanillaroma litter box.

The wife of a good friend of mine has a ’98 Accent, and she swears by it. She’s owned it since new and has had absolutely no issues at all. It’s pretty much the same car as mine, just a year younger. My sister-in-law also owned a Hyundai Elantra, and near as I can tell, she had no problems with that either. Okay, I have two favorable testimonials for Hyundai; I guess they’ve come a long way. I’ll check it out it. I went to see it one night (I always seem to do these transactions at night), and discovered that it was a cute, reasonably comfortable little car. And, it has a hatch! Stupendous. I took it for a drive, and after driving my Toyota truck for so long, this car felt like a toy. But I liked it. I could tell the exhaust needed to be replaced soon, but I expected that with pretty much any car I was seeking out. For a base-model car, it had a pretty decent amount of amenities. It has very high mileage, but I thought it’d do nicely.

A mechanic owned it, and as many can attest, that is in no way a guarantee that you’re buying a trouble-free car. I looked it over quickly on the outside and saw no readily apparent rust or rot. The right rear quarter was matte for some reason, but I figured that with some judicious buffing, I could at the very least make it look a little better. The ad for the car read that it was selling for $1000. I was ready to pay that, but as I was talking to the seller, he said he’d let it go for $900. Hmm. I didn’t even try to talk him down and out of the blue he just offered it for $100 less. He seemed like a standup guy, so I didn’t question it. It was frighteningly reminiscent of when I bought a used ’86 Kawasaki KLR 600, but that’s a story for another day. I made arrangements to pick it up a couple days later, we shook hands, and I started getting all the pertinent papers in order.

My Lady Fair and I went to go pick it up, and this time I had daylight. I didn’t realize how filthy this car was. I mean, we’re not just talking dirty exterior and a couple wrappers on the floor. This literally looked like he got in it and drove it, completely ignoring anything outside the immediate area of the driver’s seat for a year. There were still cups, wrappers, old French fries, receipts, etc. from the person HE bought the car from. It also had what appeared to be chocolate sauce and toner all over the seats and carpet. This is once again where the former detailing-for-a-living perspective comes into play. I knew I could make it right. It’d take a lot of work, but I could see there was still some beauty under all that dreck.

I drove it home and realized that I’d have to replace the exhaust sooner than I had originally anticipated. The next day, I dropped it off at a Meineke that had done some work for me before. Interestingly, the check engine light came on while I was driving there, but I figured it was because of the exhaust leak and it’d shut off when it the offending exhaust section was replaced.

Now, I have nothing but disdain for brake and muffler shops. I’ve seen people get taken advantage of too many times to count, and I’ve always found their pricing astronomical. Regardless, I can’t weld (yet), so I’m at their mercy. I figured I’d be paying about $300 for the replacement of a flex pipe. Yeah, right. The call went like this:

“Hi, this is Meineke Muffler and we have your estimate.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“Well, your flex pipe needs to be replaced, but we can’t start that unless we replace your oil pan.”
“What?!?!? My oil pan? Why? I didn’t see any leaks under the car or anything?”
“Well, it’s rotted and weeping oil and we can’t put a torch near it unless it’s replaced.”
“Jesus.”
***uncomfortable, painful pause***
“All right. What’s the estimate?”
“Exhaust, oil pan, and labor will total $596.”
***uncomfortable, painful pause***
“Siiiiiigh. What can I do? Go ahead.”

I get it back and the light is still on. My Lady Fair takes it to get inspected the next day, and it fails due to emissions. Evidently, if your check engine light is on, you fail, period. Gone are the days of sticking the wand in the tail pipe and getting the emission reading. The car’s on-board diagnostic computer tells them what the deal is now. Marvelous. So, I make an appointment at a garage that was on the list of authorized emissions repair shops that the inspection station gives when you fail.

The Weekend
LF and I clean the car top to bottom. Detailed, essentially, engine included. As LF said, you can’t even tell it’s the same car. Looks good, smells good.

Garage Appointment Day
The garage tells me that the computer shows “engine misfire” and “catalyst failure”. The first error is because two spark plug wires had popped off the distributor, and I discovered this when cleaning the engine. I don’t even know how it ran at all that way, but I put them back on and all was fine. But the computer hung onto that code. The second error? You guessed it: I needed a new catalytic converter. The shop told me that I was looking at a touch under a grand for that repair. I said thanks but no thanks, paid the diagnostic fee, and proceeded to freak out.

As all this is going on during the course of a week, all the people I’ve been burdening with the saga cry “Lemon Law! Lemon Law!” Forget the Lemon Law. I bought this car as-is, no warranties implied. That’s what you do when you buy an old car after giving it a good once-over and make a judgment call that it’s legit. After the catalytic converter news, I immediately called the original owner who was of course very apologetic and completely unaware that he car had issues. He recommended a muffler shop that could provide a universal catalytic converter for $189 installed. So that’s what I did yesterday. The check engine light is still on, but purportedly it should go out within a week once an issue has been resolved. The computer is constantly checking the car, so it has to reset on its own. A $900 car is now about $1800, and there has been a great deal of speculation that because the guy who sold me this car is a mechanic and therefore has the ability to reset the check engine light, he did so before selling it to me. I can’t say if that assumption is right or wrong because although I am supremely skeptical about most everything, I do in my heart want to give people benefit of the doubt.

This story is far from over. Stay tuned.

Island of Misfit Toys

Anyone who has seen the Claymation Christmas special Rudolph he Red-Nosed Reindeer is familiar with the Island of Misfit Toys. On this island, there is a small population of toys that didn’t make the cut for distribution. The ruler of this island is a lion named King Moonracer(!), and he has a soft spot for these passed-over creations. They are factory seconds or “B” stock, or just rejects overall. For example, there is a train with square wheels, a fish that can’t swim, a squirt gun that only squirts something as random as jam, and a “Charlie-in-the-Box". The argument presented by Mr. –in-the-Box is that “no one wants a Charlie-in-the-Box!”

Well Charlie, I’m the King Moonracer of this non-Claymation island, and I embrace you and all your Misfit friends. I’m a sucker for all of your flaws, whether you’re basses, amplifiers, camera equipment, motorcycles, or cars.

It used to be that the poster child for my charity was my ’78 Chevy Nova. This was the car that succeeded (though the descriptor hardly seems appropriate) the Chevette. The car came into my possession in a blurry succession of events; I wound up buying it from a guy who for a very brief time played guitar in my first band. I still don’t know what drew me to this car, though I suspect it was the straight six underneath its long hood. Even visually it was a mess; there was rot on the doors, rear quarters, and curiously even the metal dashboard. Inside the car, I always got a sense that time stood still. Though made in 1978, the interior styling reflected a time maybe twenty years prior; worn chrome pieces on the dash bits, tweedy tartan-looking upholstery, and again, that metal dashboard. There was also a laminated card of some saint stuffed in the corner of the instrument panel. I imagine it was Saint Nova, patron saint of sketchy automotive health. Surely many a prayer was made to this saint by the previous owner, because I was about to fill the saint’s docket with prayers of my own. The interior also smelled of frankincense and myrrh. Was mass held in this car every day too? It definitely tied in with the saint theme, so why not?

I was an eighteen-year-old college student who, as my broken-English-speaking Italian grandfather would say, “didn’t have two cents to piss in”. Somehow, I scraped together $400 for this prize.

I should back up here and mention that around this time, I was working for a guy detailing cars. This job gave me a false sense of “I can turn this lump of coal into a diamond”. That sense follows me to this day. I may be able to put a shine on something, but that can only be accomplished when there is actual metal to shine, and this wish in the form of a polishing rag doesn’t work on electronics, mechanicals, or other principles of automobiles. Nope, at best it’s just turd polishing (or for my father, the less lowbrow “putting a shine on a sneaker”).

I bought the car, and as far as I can remember, I never even took it for a test drive first. The first thing I noticed was that the driver’s seat frame was broken on the inside. A weld had broken God only knows how many years ago, so a piece of angle iron was jutting out, just waiting to lacerate me. I noticed this not by spying it as I entered the car, but as my lower back came into contact with it. I glazed over the trap at first because there was a two-by-four propping up the seat back, keeping the metal inside somehow. I didn’t know why the board was there until the unfortunate Seat vs. Flesh Incident unfolded.

Another feature I noticed was its curious lack of rear suspension. Well, it had rear suspension, but only in the academic sense. The rear leaf springs had the rigidity of warm Jell-o, and I think functional shock absorbers were back there once upon a time--in 1978. In 1989, the rear suspension was merely decorative. If I rolled over so much as a Q-tip, the suspension would bottom so harshly that it felt like landing on the frozen ground after dropping from four feet in the air on one of those red saucers used for sledding. The long driveway to the college I was attending had an inordinate amount of speed bumps, so there was some insult to injury happening there; I wasn’t especially thrilled to be there in the first place, and as I tried to get there, there was the sound of someone beating the undercarriage of my car with a pipe.

Sublime.

After not too many miles, I started to notice more curiosities. The driver’s side door was afflicted with the same ills that affect so many old American cars: too heavy and long for the woefully inadequate hinges. The door sagged and just wouldn’t latch. I tried everything I could think of to cure this problem, but I never remedied it 100%. Just when I thought I had it securely latched, I’d take a right through an intersection and the door would swing wide open. As one who finds difficulty in walking and chewing gum, driving through an intersection and simultaneously trying to reel back in a 200 lb door was especially challenging. The heater controls had all the levers broken off, so I had to use a small screwdriver to adjust them. It was a very awkward method, and it usually resulted in the fan and temperature being either full-on or off completely.

Then it came time to get the car inspected. I still knew relatively little about cars at this point and even less about the laws regarding inspection. I was long fed misinformation about an old car’s getting a Get out of Jail Free card when it came to emissions and safety standards, so I figured I was all set. The car failed inspection, not for all the reasons I thought it would, but for a cracked windshield. I only owned that car for about a week, so I didn’t really get a chance to give it a thorough going-over to determine its true state of health. The rusty metal dashboard, I discovered, was due to the crack in the windshield. That crack was there long enough, leaking water, to have actually rotted the dash. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes. I wasn’t about to pay six-, seven-, or even eight hundred dollars for a new windshield, so I sought one out at a junkyard. They were kind enough to remove one from a similar Nova while I stood there watching, but they made me carry it the mile back to the office. There really is no easy way to carry a 5’x2’ sheet of laminated glass, so I had to carry it over my head for that mile.

I drove to a windshield replacement shop, and they agreed to install if for me. This is when the fun REALLY began. When they removed my old windshield, they discovered that it wasn’t just the dashboard that was rotted; it was the firewall too and there was really nothing to mount the new glass to. I must have given them a look of hopelessness/helplessness/haplessness/desperation/suicidal tendency, because they suddenly came up with a solution: they would somehow fill the void in the firewall and dash by unloading several tubes’ worth of silicone into the holes and somehow “float” the glass in place. Miraculously, it worked, and for several days I drove with much paranoia that the glass would just slip down like so much melting ice cream.

The car also had a tendency to smoke. This wasn’t a mere wisp, either. This was smoke like a ninja uses to elude capture. The engine was very strong but always sounded like someone dropped a bag of marbles in the cylinders. Good grief did that thing knock. However, that wasn’t where the smoke came from. It had a leaky seal somewhere, and oil would weep onto the exhaust, causing a smoke show especially when sitting still. I remember quite vividly driving home from school, particularly downtrodden and getting pulled over for speeding. As I sat there silently as the smug cop added to his monthly quota, the car just smoked and smoked. It was the cherry on the sundae, really. How I didn’t get cited for driving a fire hazard is beyond me.

My father was away on business as all this was going on, so he was completely unaware that I had purchased this, the first in a long line of albatross. I had to pick him up one night from his office as he had just returned from the trip. He was outside waiting with his boss, and when I rolled up the first thing he did was incredulously look at me, then at his boss, then at me again, and ask, “What the hell is THIS?” What the hell is this, indeed.

Strangely, I took this car to the car wash pretty often. I was driving a heap, but it was a clean heap. Taking it to the car wash meant that I didn’t have to wash it myself, thereby preventing lacerations and the ensuing tetanus shot due to the rotting body panels. In order to avoid any further injury, I duct taped the offending razor-sharp edges. By the time I was done, the car looked as if it were two-toned. By a blind man.

Unbeknownst to me, the trunk also leaked. As I mentioned before, I was a broke college student, never prepared for the exorbitant amount of money I needed to fork every semester for books. One of my most expensive books was the one for Accounting (at the risk of dating myself, it even had a tutorial on 5 ¼” floppy), and that was $100. Without putting even an angstrom of thought into the mistake I was making, I kept my schoolbooks in the trunk. Well, it rained one day, and that was when I discovered, albeit way too late, that the trunk leaked. The Accounting book swelled to three times its normal size and all the pages stuck together, thereby rendering it useless. My father looked at me with his mouth half-open, slowly shook his head, and walked away.

I didn’t have the car long. After Christmas break, it was time to start a new semester at college. It was snowing pretty hard the first day back, and upon entering the driveway of the school, I spun out and took out a sign. It’s a well-known fact that rear-wheel drive American cars are largely ineffective in snow, so the incident was inevitable. As I headed to the main office to report that I completely obliterated one of their signs, I vowed to get rid of that car. I drove it to my usual junkyard and watched them pick it up with a forklift and crush it. It was beautiful.

Why Does Fabian Look Sixty?

You know how when you'd watch a sitcom like Laverne and Shirley or Happy Days (or perhaps Full House for you younger folk), and suddenly there's a musical guest? Not surprisingly, these little "features" show up when the show has run its course and is in dire need of being put out to pasture. It's essentially a way to fill ten minutes that would have ordinarily been filled with the usual hijinx and tomfoolery. It's a desperate crutch used by writers to compensate for a dry creative well.

My version of that very desperate act is in the form of posting comics. This isn't to say that my web log is begging for its end (or is it?), but it's most definitely a testament to the laziness I've got going on at the moment. Behold the Big Fat Whale.

Insert Witty Title Here

I mentioned that there will be a new (to us) car in the family soon.

It has arrived.

Naturally, there's a saga behind it. In the meantime, enjoy a little Get Fuzzy: