Car Woes

It's Election Day in Blue State, so I played hooky to spend some time working at the polls, making phone calls, and the such.

I spent about an hour outside one of our busier polling place this morning, then came home for a break.

I'd planned to head back out for the "lunch rush" but while I was home, we got a phone call from the mechanic who's working on my car. It was not good news.

It seems that, rather than a leaking head gasket, I actually have a cracked head.

That is, my car has a cracked head.

Which I need like, well, a cracked head.

Mind you, I really don't know what any of this means until he boils it down to dollars and cents.

The answer: Lots and lots of dollars. And a few cents.

The gasket was going to be about $500 to fix.

To replace the head will be more like, well, here's how the conversation went:

Mechanic: "parts . . . labor . . . oil change . . . tax . . . I'm at around $1300 now. And, you know, your windshield is cracked."

Whozat: "Yeah. It's not going to pass inspection (in February) like that, is it?"

Mechanic: "Nope."

Whozat: "How much for that?"

Mechanic: "Another 2, 3 hundred. And I see at least one tire that probably needs to be replaced."

Whozat: "This is not $1500 car, is it?"

Mechanic: "Not really."

Soooooo, I blew off the lunch shift at the polls (it wasn't assigned or anything, I was just taking it upon myself to go above and beyond) and joined Shrike on her dog walk, so we could talk about the whole car situation.

The one thing we're certain of is that we're not going to put $1500 into a car that the Kelley Blue Book says would be worth about $900 if it were in excellent condition.

Which it totally is not.

Even in "good" condition (which is questionable, even after the repair), it might be worth about $500.

In its current condition . . .

Well, surely we could get at least that much for it, just for scrap, right?

If we don't replace the head, and just put it all back together and put some "stop leak" in it, there's no way to know how long it will hold out before it leaks water into the oil or who into the whatnow and something that sounds like it's probably a bad thing happens, resulting in a sudden lack of go.

Mechanic: "I can't tell you if it'll give you another 1000 miles, or 5000 or 100,000 . . . ."

Whozat: "Or 100?"

Mechanic: "Right."

I don't know if continuing to drive it with the leak would just mean that it's going to stop at some point, or if it could lead to something catastrophic happening to the engine, but I'm thinking that wouldn't really put it in much worse shape that it is now, in terms of trade-in value.

And, I have a cell phone and AAA and travel mostly on the interstate, so I'm not really worried about being "stranded somewhere" if it suddenly decides that it doesn't want to start. Or wants to stop.

(To be safe, I can toss a couple of -40°-rated sleeping bags in the back til spring. If it lasts that long.)

The upside is that if it poops out on us before we're ready to buy a new one, we actually do have a third vehicle. A couple of years ago, we bought a very used small pick-up truck from Shrike's dad.

Mostly it sits in the driveway, but we use it for hauling things occassionally (she's used it a lot lately to get lots and lots and lots of mulch and compost for the yard) and if we're down a car, it will get someone to work and back.

(Usually Shrike, because I work farther away, so I get to take the good car. Also, I think she likes it.)

I'm not real keen on the truck being one of our main vehicles, but it is an option, to buy us some time.

So, we'd decided to just blow off the repair and hope it lasts a while longer, at least til we have some clue how much more money we're going to be spending on Project Baby. (More on that in a moment.)

I called the mechanic back and told him not to fix it, just put it back together. That's when he pointed out that "putting it back together" would, basically, be the originally-planned $500 replacement of the gasket.

Oh.

So, while the decision to not put $1500 into it was a no-brainer, now we're trying to decide whether to put $500 into it.

It occurred to me (after the garage had closed for the evening) that they've probably already earned a good bit of the that $500, though, for the time they've spent diagnosing it, then tearing it apart.

So, now I have to call them and find out how much we'd owe if we were to just stop right now, and have it towed away. And then we'll decide whether:

a> it's worth the difference between that and $500, or

b> if we can find someone to buy it from us for more than that amount if
we just pay them to get it back and then sell it, or

c> if the mechanic wants to "buy" it from us for that amount, and just
call it even (as our transmission guy did with Shrike's last car, because we
owed him for a bunch of pointless work)

Shrike's "gear-head" buddy at work has advised us to go "all or nothing," either suck it up and fix it right, or cut our losses and get a new one.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I think that, whether we fix it or ditch it, we'll probably hold off as long as we can on buying a new ("new to us," of course, not actually "new-new") one.

I would sure feel better about doing that if I were already pregnant, and we didn't have that big financial (and everything else) question hanging over us.

On the other hand, would it be smarter to go ahead and buy one in December, when the dealers are trying to unload their inventory?

Earlier today, I was bemoaning the fact that, although I know a lot of people through my political dealings, unfortunately, none of them are used car salesmen.

Shrike said, "That's because they have no souls. So they're Republicans."