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Friday, July 07, 2006
Ghettomobile.
At some point when I wasn't paying attention (though I don't think it was because I wasn't paying attention), my car started to become amazingly ghetto. I have no idea what is going on.A long time ago, perhaps before I moved to D.C., one of the car's sensors went bad. It was still under warranty, and after several trips back to the dealership I was told that the only way to fox the sensor was to replace the entire wheel hub assembly. I don't know what a wheel hub assembly is, but it sounds expensive to replace. Consequently, it is expensive to replace. The effect of the broken sensor is that the "service vehicle soon," "traction," and "ABS brakes" lights stay lit on the dash for always. Its not a big deal that they're on, but it is a little nervous-making that if one of those lights needed to be on due to an actual problem, I would never know.
Not long after that, the "check engine soon" light took to coming on if the car didn't like the way you put the gas cap on after filling the tank. As far as I can tell, there is only one right way to get the gas cap on, but evidently, its a delicate procedure.
Last year, I managed to bump side mirrors with another car driving around a narrow circular drive. Their car, a BMW or some such, was totally fine. My car's side mirror fell out of its bracket, landed face down on the pavement, and broke. Since then, I've been driving around with only fragments of the passenger side mirror still in place. Its better than nothing, and I don't even notice it anymore, but it does look pretty trashy.
Several months ago, the brackets that support my drivers side window broke, knocking the window out of its track. The result was that the window got off its track and had to be grabbed by hand and wrestled into a semi-closed position. My father fixed it, but the small plastic strip that used to hold down the inner door lining along the bottom of the window has been missing ever since. As a result, every time you roll the window up or down, a piece of car interior gets shifted loose. Again, no big deal, but it does look bad.
Just before the wedding, I got into my car and realized that the fabric covering the dashboard is starting to come loose. My guess is that the sun dissolved the glue, so the dash, instead of being smooth and pretty, is all ripply and funky looking.
And then, the other day, when Jason and I were coming home and he was tying to park the car, the button on the gear shift fell off. That's right. The button that you press in to make the shifter move from, say, drive to reverse or into park? Fell off. What the hell? Again, it looks largely like an issue of glue. Now, to shift the car, you have to carefully support the button in its place before you gently press and wiggle it in to move the shifter. If you're driving and hit a bump? Out it falls. I've taken to driving with it in my lap, so that I don't risk losing track of it at a traffic light. Yeah. Real classy.
So we have random lights, loose fabric, broken mirror, rumply dash, and detached gear shift button. My car might be messy, but all that is really a little much for me. Thankfully, this car runs properly, but I'd love to know why I can't just manage to have a fully functional automobile.
Posted at 11:26 AM ::