Suck. Sucktastic. Suckitude. Suckarama.
Yesterday I was schlepping the Environmental Non-Profit's driver (for our office paper recycling venture) around the county. I noticed that my car was idling *really* roughly, so roughly that I was worried that it would stall. So when I got back to the office, I sucked it up and made an appointment for the car today.
Then when I fired my car up in the evening to go home, the "check coolant" light was on. I gave it coolant, the light went off, and we drove home. Then I fired it up to go to TKD later that evening. Yep, you guessed it. The "check coolant" light was back on. I gave it more coolant, and we drove merrily on our way. When I got out of TKD, and fired up my car, my friend the "check coolant" light was back on. I looked under the car, and there was no puddle of coolant, as one would expect if it were leaking out. By now, huge alarm bells were ringing, because if the coolant wasn't leaking out on the ground, it was going through the tailpipe, and that spells "head gasket problems."
Sylvantechie and I started to discuss options for replacing the car last night. This morning, I brought it to the town I work in, and it was running hot the entire way. If I were a betting woman, I would say it's 95% certain to be the head or the head gasket. Which runs $500 - $1200 and up. And the brakes need work. And the transmission is going to go one of these days. And I need to fix the front fender before it will pass inspection (currently, the front passenger side door doesn't open). Le sigh. It's just not worth putting several thousand dollars of work in to my car, when it's worth about $1500.
Replacement options are many, and hard to sort out. I'd kind of like an all wheel drive about two or three days out of the year, but all-wheel drive cars don't get excellent gas mileage. The way gas prices are going, and my forty-five mile round trip commute every day tell me that I want as fuel efficient a car as I can get. But then, I'll probably want an all wheel drive when we move on to the land. On the third hand, we'll probably want a pickup truck at some point when we're working on the land.
Options: a) buy a cheap, fuel efficient car that will last another 3 - 5 years, which we could buy outright.
b) Buy a not so cheap, fuel efficient car that will last much longer. Hybrid, perhaps. Or maybe a diesel, with an eye towards running biodiesel.
c) Buy an all wheel drive, and suck up the lack of fuel efficiency
d) Buy a pickup. Sylvantechie will use it to commute, as he has a trivial commute, and I'll use the Suburu that is currently his.
Waffle, waffle.
At least my car didn't actually strand me. It would have been ideal if it had held on for another six months or year, because most of our money is currently tied up for the land closing.