Entertaining, but I didn't expect it to take the whole day

[dreamshark]

I took me car in for something and discovered that the oil was TWO QUARTS LOW. Not only has this car never used signficant oil before, I had just had the oil changed.... well, just recently. However, I was embarrassed to discover I really had no idea when. I then made an appointment to take the car back on Monday for its 60K maintenance (that's the replace-the-timing-belt one, where you pay $600 to fix something that isn't broken because modern cars are designed so that when this thing DOES break it destroys your engine. Or so they tell me.) Anyway, I figured it would be a good idea to look through the folder of service receipts and figure out what other stuff had already been done in the last couple of years so I didn't pay to have something unnecessary done again.

While I was sitting in the shop waiting for them to change the oil and replace the wiper, I decided it would be a good idea to create a car repair database on my iTouch so I would henceforth have all this information on hand when I needed it. This was really fun, as I discovered new features in HanDBase. Today I started sorting through my folders of car-repair paperwork and entering it in the database. Along the way I kept thinking of better ways to nest databases inside each other so I wouldnt have to repeat information, so it wasnt a simple data entry task. In fact, I now have 3 interlinked databases: one for my cars (at last, some place to write down my license plate numbers!), one for repair records, and one for garages. I had to come up with names for each vehicle as a mechanism for linking the records to each other, so I decided to name my yellow car "Goldberry." It turns out Richard and Thorin had named the van "Scarab" for some reason, so I used that. (I had no idea what it was named because in our household we have a tradition of thinking up clever names for our vehicles and then always referring to them as "the van" and "the car.") I sorted and entered all the info I could find, including slips of paper tucked into the glove compartment of the car. And all of a sudden it's almost 7pm. Yikes.

I've had some interesting insights, however. In the Garages database I annotated the nice little shop on the corner as "Friendly and apparently honest, but I'm dubious about their competence." As I gathered up the data I kept finding more and more evidence to support that vague feeling of unease. Besides being the guys that apparently filled my engine with disappearing oil 3 months ago, I discovered the following:

• That time last summer when we limped through a weeklong vacation watching the oil light flashing every time the engine speed slowed down? We took the van to these guys when we got home and they spent half a day diagnosing it before concluding that it was a bad oil sensor. Replacing the part fixed the problem, so I guess they were right. But guess who had replaced EXACTLY THAT SAME PART 18 months previously? Yep, it was them.

• Before we bought the current Voyager Van we had them check it over, being particularly concerned that the "Check Engine" light was on all the time. They said that "no codes" turned up for it, so it must just be a malfunctioning light. Admittedly, the light has continued to shine on the dashboard for 3.5 years now with no obvious problem related to it. But the claim that there are "no codes" associated with it? According to the paperwork that the previous owner gave us from HIS garage, the engine light came on shortly before we bought the car and it means "catalytic converter low efficiency." Hmm. Bet it's even lower efficiency now.

By this time I was having so much fun that I sorted and read through the repair records for our last van. I know that sounds pointless, but since it was an earlier model of The Scarab, it is relevant. It's interesting how some problems with certain vehicles never go away no matter how many model years go by.

Comments

[sraun]

the nice little shop on the corner as "Friendly and apparently honest, but I'm dubious about their competence."

Which corner?

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I hesitate to mention their name in this context because I'm not quite SURE they've screwed up anything. Maybe 2000 Voyagers are prone to defective oil sensors. Maybe the former owner replaced the catalytic converter and the engine light really is defective. And *shudder* maybe my car really IS burning 2 quarts of oil in 3 months.

That last one is something I can monitor. I'll start checking my oil regularly. If it clearly isn't burning oil, I'm going to assume that the garage somehow managed to screw up pretty much the simplest procedure that a garage can perform and try to convince Richard to stop taking the van there.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

we have a tradition of thinking up clever names for our vehicles and then always referring to them as "the van" and "the car."

LOL. 'Goldberry' sounds like a great name for the yellow car, and the database(s) sound like an excellent idea, as well.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

This sounds like a very good project. However, the garage we always use, Amigo, keeps our electronic records for us.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Hey, Amigo is in my database! I think Richard bought a tire from them once; we don't go there regularly. Do you recommend them? I really don't have a garage I trust right now. At the moment I'm trying out the Midas on Lyndale (did you know that Midas is now a pretty much full service garage, not just mufflers?).

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

We highly recommend them. We have been going there for at least 20 years; it's a family-owned business, now being run by the second generation.