I killed my car

[chrisvenus]

Today I got the bad news that my car is pretty dead. The worst thing is that its pretty much my fault. I intend to recount the story of my own stupidity here as a lesson to others and so that I never need to say it again and feel stupid every time I do.

So, a while ago when I was driving I noticed a red light come on my dashboard. I peered at it and it went out. Oh good, I thought and thought nothing more of it. A while later the light appeared and disappeared again. It was the oil light.

The light started appearing intermittently, usually when I first started the car before it had warmed up. I figured probably it meant the car was maybe a bit low on oil but by the time it heated up it stopped caring. Now I know that my annual service always gives me a full oil change so I thought I'd leave it til then. If it was a critical problem the light would be on all the time, right?

Wrong. Last friday on the way home from work my car started making evil unhappy noises. Coming from the engine. "Shit" thinks I. I limp home, taking the slow route through oxford for fear of breaking down on the A34. I don't, I make it home fine. Saturday morning I check the oil level and find it definitely needs oil so I go and get some. I put three liters of oil into the car before it decides its pretty much happy again (according to the dipstick). I got a very bad feeling about how critically wrong things might have been at this stage since the difference between max and min, according to the handbook, is 1.5L.

At the time it was sounding much happier and when I drove it saturday it was rattling a little but much quieter and, I thought, getting better though I suspect I was kidding myself.

Then on the way to work on monday it crit failed. A lot more noise and a huge power loss in the engine. I decided to pull over and get a recovery dude to come take me away. So on monday it was taken to the garage where it was due for its service today.

Today the phone call that I had been expecting came. It was worse than I thought though. I'd been expecting maybe up to a grand of damages, worst case. If I was lucky a couple of hundred. Not good but not bad. No, instead he told me of the woes of my little end, the issues that my crank might be having and the forbidden friendship that may have developed between my pistons and valves. He then explained that there were two solutions, the complete engine or the parts. The latter was coming in at 1100 pounds and the former at over three thousand. Now these prices exclude VAT (so another 200 and 500 quid respectively) and labour (10 hours at 85+VAT per hour) meaning that repairs would be a minimum of about 2,000 pounds.

My car is worth less than that.

So I killed my car. This is, of course, a whole world of bad. I have no wheels and need to sort out more. I'm goign to be exploring the joys of bussing to work in the morning and of course not being able to get about anywhere near as easily.

The one upside of it is that I've always liked the Toyota Celica and this might be my opportunity to buy one. I'm looking at them about 3 years old at about 10k. This is a scary amount of money.

So yeah, that's my current woes. I did start feeling really miserable about this but then I realised half of it was guilt about having killed the car through my own negligence. Then I realised I should stop anthropomorphising it and accept that it was actually just a car with no mind of its own and no opinion one way or another on whether its engine worked or was a heap of junk. I'm still pissed off at myself for being so stupid but now I'm looking on the brightside that if I can scrounge the money together I get a shiny new car that I have been longing for for some time.

I now just need to look to see if I can find somewhere to go test drive them to see if they are all I've been after. :)

Comments

[kissifa.livejournal.com]

Boo about no wheels. I hope the Celica is what you're hoping for! :)