Showing posts with label van. Show all posts
Showing posts with label van. Show all posts
Sunday, April 27, 2008
car dealers
On top of everything else last weekend, we sold our Ford custom van. At a wonderful 14 mpg and the quick rise of gas prices, I just could not take it any more. It a momentary lapse of judgement I told me wife we should take the van to the Wal-Mart parking lot and leave it with a For Sale sign in the window. We sold the van within a couple of hours and so we were down to a single vehicle between us. Not a bad thing, unless you consider the fact that I have to drive to work which is 20 miles away in one direction every day of the week. Since it was late Sunday, we had a couple of choices and decided to try Enterprise Rental cars since they are just down the road a couple of miles. All week long my wife searched the internet for the best car for us. We did not consider a brand new car because of the high price and we do not want to have monthly payments for 5-6 years as that is no fun. Yesterday we checked all of the local small-time dealers in the huge metropolis of Fuquay Varina. One sells high end cars, one sells perfect cars for teenagers which you don't mind if they trash or crash them, one struck me as not very honest, one was from the county of Jordan. Quite a mixture for such a small town. We then ventured outside the town limits to a couple of new car dealers right outside town, as they sell what are called "program cars". These are cars that are owned and driven by dealerships and then sold as used cars. We ended up driving just about every reasonably priced SUV on the market for sale: Ford Escape, Jeep Liberty, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Honda CRV, Nissan Xterra, Mazda Tribute, Toyota Rav4, Hyundai Tucson, and Suzuki Reno. Like my wife said yesterday, there are just too many vehicles to choose from and that makes it even harder. We ventured to the Cary Auto Park in the evening, where there are just about every vehicle brand for sale in the USA can be found. The final place we visited illustrates what I think of dealerships. We drove around most of the dealers looking for the used cars on display in the lots. As we were leaving the final dealer, we saw a nice Mazda Tribute displayed nicely as it was parked on the sidewalk. We went back, which was our first mistake, and asked to drive it. At the big dealerships,someone rides with you from the dealership while you take a test drive. Since the price was too high as said we were not interested. The salesman went inside and said the owner would do something silly to get rid of it as it had been on the lot longer than any other vehicle. I told him I would buy it for $3000 under the price listed right then. He made me sign a paper saying that and ran off to talk to the owner. He came back and told me that was too low. So much for doing anything to sell it!
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
When it rains it pours
The last couple of weeks have been crazy as I have documented in previous posts. This week is keeping the trend going strong. We had problem with the heat not working in the van on Friday. I told my wife to keep calm and not come up with ridiculous excuses to get a new vehicle. Yesterday I had to work from home since an A/C man was coming to check our heat pump system as something was not right. At 2:30pm my wife called me to tell me stream was pouring out from under the front of the van. That was odd since a friend had the weekend before "fixed" the van. At least he is a friend I can trust. When I arrived all of the kids were peacefully sitting in the van for the father-hero to show up. I checked the coolant since our friend had replaced the radiator and it was as dry as the desert. Fortunately, I had bought an extra jug of coolant an left it in the van a couple of weeks ago, so I poured what I had into the radiator. The nice thing about living in such a small town is that my mechanic friend's shop was less than a mile away! Then the A/C man said there was a problem with the humidifier as you are supposed to service them every year and it had not been done in the last 5 years. Wow, what else could go wrong?
Turns out a lot could, but only one other thing affected us the past weekend. We found out that our oldest son has been having all kinds of problems with his other three roommates. Two had been fired from their jobs and no one paid the utilities, so he paid for them all. He does not have enough money to pay for rent next month. He hates his job as he works long hours at Lonestar Steakhouse and gets few tips. Sounds like a fun life he has chosen! He called yesterday to tell us he quit his job, but thank goodness he found another job and started that one today at Walgreens.
So far all disasters have been diverted - we just keep loosing money in the meantime. Maybe we are building character to make us better people. At least I hope so.
Turns out a lot could, but only one other thing affected us the past weekend. We found out that our oldest son has been having all kinds of problems with his other three roommates. Two had been fired from their jobs and no one paid the utilities, so he paid for them all. He does not have enough money to pay for rent next month. He hates his job as he works long hours at Lonestar Steakhouse and gets few tips. Sounds like a fun life he has chosen! He called yesterday to tell us he quit his job, but thank goodness he found another job and started that one today at Walgreens.
So far all disasters have been diverted - we just keep loosing money in the meantime. Maybe we are building character to make us better people. At least I hope so.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
not the week we planned
This weekend we had a great plan all setup. My mother was supposed to come from Arizona for my sister's 50th birthday. We were going to drive up to the motherland, beautiful Virginia, for a getaway weekend. Sometimes you just cannot plan for the chain of events that occur.
Last weekend I took our van to get the oil changed and in anticipation of the big weekend I wanted to be all set. I told the Meineke man that I had seen stains on the driveway and to make sure the leaks did not come from our van. When I checked back in with him after an hour, he showed me how the radiator had a crack in it. I asked for a quote on the work and he said $850. That was odd to me since a couple of years ago I had the radiator fixed in my son's car for $400. I immediately went to a good friend who has his own car mechanic shop and asked him to check it for me. He told me I was the first person to complain about the high price at Meineke and he would find out the cost and get back with me on Monday. Sure enough, he quoted a little over $400. Since I was taking off from work on Friday, we scheduled that day for van radiator overhaul knowing I would be all set for the weekend trip to Virginia. One other odd thing about radiators... In the good old days you could fix radiators by pouring a solution into them and it would clog the small leaks in no time. These days of advanced technology, radiators are plastic, which means if the crack you have to replace them. When you get a crack the cold to hot temperature changes make them fail even faster. Sounds like progress to me. Except for the fact that plastic is lighter, but then again our van gets 14 miles/gallon, so I am not sure that lighter radiator is helping.
On Tuesday night my mother called and said she saw the forecast for ice and snow and extremely low temperatures and cancelled her flight. Which was pretty disappointing, but she had a cold recently and was afraid the cold might trigger more sickness. Our well intended plans were starting to fall apart.
On Wednesday our dishwasher stopped working. We had this same thing happen a couple of years ago and when I tried to find someone to fix it, they all told me to forget it as the dishwashers are self contained and it was cheaper to buy a new one that fix an existing one. And guess what? The dishwasher is plastic! Two plastic failures in the same week. We let the completely full dishwasher sit, until Friday. I took off the water line to check to make sure the water was flowing, which it was, so it was indeed the motor inside the plastic housing. I turned off the hot water shutoff value and sat down to read the newspaper. My daughter came down to cook her morning eggs and yelled to me to come over as water was flowing on the kitchen floor. I opened the cabinets under the sink and saw a lake had formed, which I cleaned up quickly. I thought that was odd, but checked the hot water line and it was indeed off. I left the find a new water hose, just in case the one had a leak in it. The odd thing was the length from the hot water line to the dishwasher was 10 feet. They only make dishwasher cords in 4 and 6 foot lengths. It took 4 stores to find the connections I needed to get it to work with a 10 foot ice maker cord. When I got back my daughter again told me a flood was happening in the kitchen. I checked the hot water shutoff value again and this time being wiser, I turned on the sink faucet cold water and saw water pouring out of the hot water dishwasher connection, which was plastic of course, connected to a PVC plastic water line. The custom builder who built our house liked to make sure everything was custom built!
On Saturday morning we picked up our fixed van for the bargain price of $420 and thanks to our corrupt Meineke shop, my friend had made some money. Since snow and ice were in the weather forecast we put off our trip to Virginia for one more day. Now that we had a van we could go find a new dishwasher. My wife and I checked every store we could find as we typically like to buy scratch-n-dent or discontinued high ticket items. We found a high end model normally selling for $498 which was marked down to $298, which was cheaper than almost any other one we could find. We brought it home and when I tried to install it I found that the connectors I got the day before were not right. Off to my favorite home improvement store as there was a plumber who worked there who had always helped me in the past. He fixed me up and by 8:30pm last night I had the dishwasher working. The place we bought it said the really high end dishwashers are stainless steel and are very quiet, we chose the quiet plastic model because of cost!
This morning we woke up to my daughter vomiting, which she has continued for 3 hours. Sounds like that seals our Virginia plans. What sounded like such a good idea has not worked out and we are $750 poorer as well. What a week!
Last weekend I took our van to get the oil changed and in anticipation of the big weekend I wanted to be all set. I told the Meineke man that I had seen stains on the driveway and to make sure the leaks did not come from our van. When I checked back in with him after an hour, he showed me how the radiator had a crack in it. I asked for a quote on the work and he said $850. That was odd to me since a couple of years ago I had the radiator fixed in my son's car for $400. I immediately went to a good friend who has his own car mechanic shop and asked him to check it for me. He told me I was the first person to complain about the high price at Meineke and he would find out the cost and get back with me on Monday. Sure enough, he quoted a little over $400. Since I was taking off from work on Friday, we scheduled that day for van radiator overhaul knowing I would be all set for the weekend trip to Virginia. One other odd thing about radiators... In the good old days you could fix radiators by pouring a solution into them and it would clog the small leaks in no time. These days of advanced technology, radiators are plastic, which means if the crack you have to replace them. When you get a crack the cold to hot temperature changes make them fail even faster. Sounds like progress to me. Except for the fact that plastic is lighter, but then again our van gets 14 miles/gallon, so I am not sure that lighter radiator is helping.
On Tuesday night my mother called and said she saw the forecast for ice and snow and extremely low temperatures and cancelled her flight. Which was pretty disappointing, but she had a cold recently and was afraid the cold might trigger more sickness. Our well intended plans were starting to fall apart.
On Wednesday our dishwasher stopped working. We had this same thing happen a couple of years ago and when I tried to find someone to fix it, they all told me to forget it as the dishwashers are self contained and it was cheaper to buy a new one that fix an existing one. And guess what? The dishwasher is plastic! Two plastic failures in the same week. We let the completely full dishwasher sit, until Friday. I took off the water line to check to make sure the water was flowing, which it was, so it was indeed the motor inside the plastic housing. I turned off the hot water shutoff value and sat down to read the newspaper. My daughter came down to cook her morning eggs and yelled to me to come over as water was flowing on the kitchen floor. I opened the cabinets under the sink and saw a lake had formed, which I cleaned up quickly. I thought that was odd, but checked the hot water line and it was indeed off. I left the find a new water hose, just in case the one had a leak in it. The odd thing was the length from the hot water line to the dishwasher was 10 feet. They only make dishwasher cords in 4 and 6 foot lengths. It took 4 stores to find the connections I needed to get it to work with a 10 foot ice maker cord. When I got back my daughter again told me a flood was happening in the kitchen. I checked the hot water shutoff value again and this time being wiser, I turned on the sink faucet cold water and saw water pouring out of the hot water dishwasher connection, which was plastic of course, connected to a PVC plastic water line. The custom builder who built our house liked to make sure everything was custom built!
On Saturday morning we picked up our fixed van for the bargain price of $420 and thanks to our corrupt Meineke shop, my friend had made some money. Since snow and ice were in the weather forecast we put off our trip to Virginia for one more day. Now that we had a van we could go find a new dishwasher. My wife and I checked every store we could find as we typically like to buy scratch-n-dent or discontinued high ticket items. We found a high end model normally selling for $498 which was marked down to $298, which was cheaper than almost any other one we could find. We brought it home and when I tried to install it I found that the connectors I got the day before were not right. Off to my favorite home improvement store as there was a plumber who worked there who had always helped me in the past. He fixed me up and by 8:30pm last night I had the dishwasher working. The place we bought it said the really high end dishwashers are stainless steel and are very quiet, we chose the quiet plastic model because of cost!
This morning we woke up to my daughter vomiting, which she has continued for 3 hours. Sounds like that seals our Virginia plans. What sounded like such a good idea has not worked out and we are $750 poorer as well. What a week!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)