October 26, 2010

• How I Broke My Car

  It might be accurate to say I “totaled” my car, since all 3 mechanics I have consulted declined even to look at it after I described its condition.  But “totaled” implies, to most people, a wreck, a collision, or something of that sort.  All I did to total my car was drive over a bump.

  

  Blur, shown above at the spring, now up on blocks in my yard, is the successor to Streak, another silver 1987 Subaru wagon, identical except that Streak had a roof rack.  Streak was replaced by Blur when Greyfox learned that it would cost more to fix the drive axle than it would cost to buy another old rustbucket used car.  Streak had been okay before that axle went bad, a reasonably adequate, somewhat reliable set of wheels.  Blur turned out to be something special because his former owner was a mechanic.  He had installed a manual choke that made the car easy to start in cold weather, and had made some modifications to the engine that made me need to pay attention to my speed.  I’d be cruising along, glance down, and discover to my chagrin that I was going 85 MPH in a 65 zone.  One night, around 2 AM, I was passing through Willow when an oncoming State Trooper flashed his headlights at me.  That time I was doing 75 in a 45.  Nice trooper.

  Anyhow, I loved driving Blur despite his tendency to overreact to my leadfootedness.  The only cars I’ve liked any better than him were my MGB and the X1/9.  Blur’s advantage over either of them was his cargo capacity.  I could haul about 60 gallons of water in jugs and buckets in that hatch.  I wasn’t hauling water when I hit the bump that killed Blur.  That time, the hatch was full of clean laundry in baskets, a bunch of groceries and other supplies, and some dumpster score that Greyfox had been accumulating for us since the last trip to town.

  On the previous trip back from Wasilla, going over some rough road in a construction zone, my muffler had been knocked loose and had to be replaced.  A series of trips back and forth across those bumpy miles of gravel might have contributed to the damage that ultimately killed Blur.  There was a loud thud from the back when I went over a barely noticeable bump at a bridge approach, and a few miles later, concerned about continued thumps, bumps and dragging sounds, I pulled over and called AAA.  After the disabled wagon was deposited in my driveway and we started unloading the cargo, I noticed that a big, dirty, rusty coil spring was protruding into the cargo area through a huge jagged tear in the left rear wheel well. 

  I distinctly remembered having loaded a bag of grapes and bananas on top of that wheel well.  When we couldn’t find them, I assumed that they had fallen out the hole somewhere along the way.  Next day, in daylight, I found the bruised fruit about 5 feet away, on the other side of the car, where it had been flung by the spring.

  I made some phone calls.  The consensus of my mechanically inclined friends was that Blur was a hopeless case.  I made a few more calls, hoping to find an old Subaru body into which I could have somebody bolt Blur’s oh-so-special engine.  A couple of the guys actually laughed at me.  Ray said Subies just keep going until they fall apart, and Morg talked about something he called, “tin bugs,” that like to eat Subaru bodies.

  Greyfox got all stressed out over the necessity of (a) buying me a “new” vehicle, or (b) ferrying supplies the 50 miles up the valley every month or two.  I tried to reassure him that I didn’t expect him to rush to the rescue.  I had been living out here without a vehicle for 5 years when he gave me his old X1/9 after it had been rear-ended while parked, the frame was bent, and his insurance company paid off on it as a total loss.  That was in Pennsylvania, and that (totally wrecked, uninsured) car got me (at the time, an unlicensed driver) back to Alaska, then on a 28,000-mile road trip around the Southwest one winter and back to Alaska again, but turned out not to be suited to the weather and road conditions here.  Greyfox and I shared a series of vehicles until he decided I needed one of my own and bought Streak for me.  As much as I enjoy having wheels, I can’t afford to buy myself even the cheapest old rustbucket and I’d rather resign myself to hitchhiking, as I have done for most of my life, than stress out over car ownership.

  Some weeks later, a friend of Greyfox’s told him he knew a woman whose mother was giving her a newer car, leaving her with an old Subaru station wagon for sale.  She said it needed a new CV joint, but she had been driving it that way for a year or two.  She also said she’d had the car for ten years and had replaced the engine three times.  Greyfox saw it, was impressed by the condition of the interior and the relative absence of rust on the outside.  He said that someone had screwed and bolted bumpers and bits of trim on, and he took that as a sign that someone cared for the car.  I thought he was probably right about that and didn’t mention my further surmise, that it was a sign the car was falling apart.

  Greyfox paid $500 for it, a red 1985 Subaru wagon.  He kept it in Wasilla for a couple of weeks, got a friend with mechanical skills to look it over and grease the offending CV joint.  Meanwhile, he drove it several times and raved about what a sweet vehicle it was.  Right up until a day or two before he brought it to me, everything he told me about the car was positive:  it has a moon roof and a roof rack, clean upholstery, aftermarket fog lights (one of which is burned out), good heater… then he mentioned that it apparently needed an oil change because the oil was “awfully black,” and that oil was leaking onto a hot part of the engine, smoking and stinking.  The “CV joint” problem, he assumed, was related to the shimmy that occurred at around 55 MPH.

  One day, he drove up here, presumably at under 55 MPH, to deliver the car, then hitched back to Wasilla, since we had jointly decided that I should get the shimmy fixed immediately, before driving it further.  I started looking the car over and determined that the suspension was in bad shape – bouncy, bouncy all ’round.  I called Ray, made an appointment, then started making a list of things I wanted him to do, beginning with the oil change and putting my snow tires on.  The car was over at Ray’s shop for a week or so before he finally got it in and looked it over.  He called one day and said he’d done the tire changeover, oil change, and installed a new oil filter.  The front drive axle was bad, the strut towers were so rusted out it would be futile to try and fix the suspension, and the oil leak was coming from the head gasket.  He said it wouldn’t be cost-effective to try to fix it, he wouldn’t even consider switching the engine out for Blur’s, and called my new red car a “money pit.”

  I discussed with Ray the measures I could take to keep the rustbucket running as long as possible.  He recommended not loading it with more than 15 gallons of water at a time, keeping my speed down to avoid the shimmy, not driving on bumpy roads more than necessary to get from here to the highway and back, check the oil every time I go anywhere and keep it topped up.  I have made two little water runs to the spring, and one laundromat run to Wasilla.  I have no plans to go anywhere else until election day in a week, when I’ll drive up to Sunshine to vote and buy 40 pounds of kitty litter at Cubby’s so I can avoid overloading the car with it on my next trip home after the laundromat.

  On the last laundry trip, I drove to Wasilla and back at about 40 MPH in third gear, to prevent the suspension-killing, axle-breaking shimmy.  I pulled over frequently to let cars get past.  I whimpered once, and Doug asked me what was wrong.  I moaned, “I’m driving like a little old lady.”  He replied, “at least you’re tall enough you don’t have to peer out through the space between the dash and the steering wheel.”  Ha ha.

  

  • 2:31 pm
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