Got Cheese? You really should, just in case. (Long and Mild)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It all started innocently enough, I was going to buy some cheese.

I have incredibly bad luck with cars, at least the last couple of years or so. Luckily, it’s not a long walk to work, and the bus system isn’t terrible. As far as my current POS, I can’t bitch too much since I only have about $1100 invested in it since I bought it almost a year ago. That includes the purchase price. Yep, I went all out on this heap. It’s starting to get a little comical. But let’s go back. . .

The car is a ’98 Saturn. It’s mostly dark green, except for where it’s rust or OPP (Other People’s Paint). I thought it was black when I bought it, because it was parked in the shade. Luckily, when I couldn’t find it in the DMV parking lot after getting my tags, because I wasn’t looking for a green car, it came with one of those nifty key fobs that unlock the doors and can make the car beep. I was grateful to be able to make my car beep, loved the key fob. It was my first time. This is the newest car I’ve ever owned, simple pleasures.

Ken, the creepy guy who sold me the car, had told me that I might have some problems with the power windows. He wasn’t sure why, but at times the ABS light on the dash would come on, and the windows were stuck in whatever position they’re in until the ABS light goes off. And there didn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason, although he said it happened more when it was cold. I bought the car last March, which is practically summer in these parts, so I wasn’t too worried, but I was curious. I found the owners’ manual and looked up ABS. Turns out it stands for Anti-Lock Brake System, and there’s a button on the dash which turns the ABS light on and off, and in doing so will make the windows work. What one has to do with the other, I’ll never know, but I really didn’t care. Problem solved, right? Not so much. Within a month the button quit working, so I was back to relying on the whims of the Saturn itself.

In the mean time, it’s getting warmer and warmer and the A/C also getting warmer and warmer. A customer of mine is an actual certified A/C technician (but not a mechanic or an electrician, which turned out to be a problem). His name is Al. He volunteered to check my A/C so I’d have an idea if it just needed to be charged, or if it was going to be more costly. Whatever he did, it took 3 or 4 afternoons per week for 3 weeks. The first week he broke it worse than it was, now the fan didn’t even work, and the second and third weeks he spent trying to fix what he’d broken. When the dome light quit working I made him stop. Al sucks. I’ve spread the word.

Then a friend of mine who IS a mechanic (but not an electrician or an A/C guy) checked all the fuses and all the relays and couldn’t figure out why the blower motor quit working, or the dome light. He also couldn’t figure out what was up with the windows, besides the windows themselves. He did however get the blinkers working, so I bought him several beers and took him to a baseball game.

By now, it’s getting really hot. And the fan won’t blow and the windows won’t go down. It’s hitting triple digits outside the car. It’s too hot to drive. Another customer, James hears about this and turns me on to a Mobile Automotive Electrician named Fernando, who came to me while I was a work and spent a good 2 hours with a lap top under the dash. After about an hour he came in and told James (I was very busy and really didn’t have time to talk to him) what he’d figured out, what he could fix and what he couldn’t fix and what he really didn’t want to diagnose. James summed all this up to me with “He can get the windows working if he takes out the alarm.” Fine, I say. I wasn’t too worried about the car being stolen. And when I got out of work that night, the windows worked!! But the key fob (remember the key fob?) did not.

One thing Creepy Ken didn’t tell me when he handed me a Zip-lock full of spare keys and key fobs, was that none of those keys work on the driver’s side door. OK. I can handle it. I just won’t keep anything of value in the car and I won’t lock the door. I still had a key to the passenger side door, in case I should lock it out of habit.

All was well for a couple of months. And then I was sideswiped. On the passenger side. The mirror is gone, a lot of the green paint is now white paint. The worst part is that the door handle is completely smashed into the door. So now I really can’t lock the driver’s side door or I’ll be trying to get in through the trunk. But I’ve had a couple months of practice not locking the doors. It’ll be fine.

Autumn comes and goes and I get through it without locking myself out.

Let’s skip to Monday night. It was my night off. I watched some TV, read a little, harassed the cats, surfed the net. And while surfing the net I come across a recipe I thought I’d like to try. It called for 3 cups of shredded cheddar cheese, of which I had approximately no cups. So, about 3 in the morning I decide I’ll just run down to the Gas n Sip and buy some cheese. I jumped in the Mighty Saturn, put on my seatbelt turned the key and. . . the battery is all but dead. Dead enough that the car won’t start, but not quite so dead that some sort of anti-fricken-theft device (which I didn’t even realized the car had) didn’t engage. The horn beeped twice quickly, all the idiot lights (that were still working after Al got ahold of them) blinked twice quickly and. . . both the doors locked.

Shit. So I’m locked IN my car at 3 AM and its freezing. I wouldn’t have believed it was happening except that it was happening to me. I was just running to the store, so while I had a coat, I wasn’t dressed for spending the night in a cold car. Not even wearing socks. The locks won’t unlock from the inside. Windows, I think, and then pray the battery has enough juice to roll one down. I got lucky (lucky?), and the driver’s side window begrudgingly began to lower , all but about the last 2 inches.

I managed to get out, but it was no easy task. It’s not as easy as The Duke Boys made it look. I’m tallish, 5’10” with long legs. I first tried putting my feet out first and then hoisting the rest of me out with the help of the steering wheel, but for one, there wasn’t near enough head room, and secondly I was afraid I’d break off the top of the window. I really didn’t need a bleeding ass to confound problems. So I ended up escaping Duke Style, except without any style or grace. Thankfully all of my neighbors were apparently asleep, so there were no witnesses.

A new battery isn’t a big deal, and I’m sure that’s all it is. But, now I have no way to unlock the doors. Just to jump start it I’ll have to crawl back in through the window. So I suppose I’ll have it rekeyed, simply so I can get in it to drive it to the nearest cliff and push it off.

To sum up, if any of you are still with me, I hereby pit Ken (just for being Creepy), Al, for general ineptitude and myself for running out of cheese. Who the fuck runs out of cheese? And for the record, that recipe didn’t need anywhere near 3 cups of cheese. I used 2 and that was too much. So I pit the person who wrote the recipe, too. I’d pit the car, but I feel sorry for it.

Thanks for listening.

2

Next time, call me. I have plenty of cheese, and I deliver.

3

So, does the car have a name?

I’ve always named my cars. The best was The Chickmobile. It was a chick magnet. I used it to pick up lots and lots of chicks. (Well, I could have. There was plenty of room in that beast.)

It was a '79 Pontiac station wagon. It was as long as a boat, but since the (bench) seat was stuck in the forward position, I drove with my knees up around my ears. The passenger-side door would open randomly. The muffler fell off on the highway. It took a good 20 minutes to warm up, and would only do so if the gas pedal was halfway down. This gave me an average MPG of about 6. It smoked like a chimney. The key would not work in the ignition without a generous application of graphite. The windshield wipers were crap. On the last day I drove it, I could only see out of a 1" wide strip that a chunk of ice was clearing. I put serious thought into causing an accident so that I could total the thing and get some insurance money.

It’s amazing how little $300 will get you these days.

4

This reinforces my belief that it’s nigh impossible to really fix a car with odd electrical problems, and those problems are destined to become more and more widespread until the car is completely unreliable.

5

You can always unlock the car from the inside by toggling the actual lock (not pushing the power door lock button).

6

I’m going to think of your post every time there’s a debate as to whether or not one should buy a used or a new car.

“Yeah, but what if you run out of cheese at 3 AM?” I’ll think to myself. Then suggest that one invest at least more than $1100 in a car.

:smiley:

7

Somebody named Cheesesteak should really have more to contribute. What about the cheese?

8

Thanks! From now on I’m *always *buying extra.

9

I hear ya. That’s why I haven’t invested much in it.

I’ll have to look, but I don’t remember there being and actual lock, just the switches. Unless you mean under the door panel?

This car doesn’t have a name, although I’ve named cars in the past. My favorite truck ever was named Clifford, because it had a seemingly useless light on the dash that said “Clifford.” I never figured out what it was for.

My brother used to drive a car that could have been the Chickmobile, except it wasn’t a station wagon. Huge, tho, he told everyone it had 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. It had a lot of kinks like yours too.

10

If it doesn’t come in a jar and isn’t spelled with two Z’s, there’s no reason to make a 3am trip to go buy some.

11

If you don’t know how you did it, I have to conclude that Creepy Ken asked Inept Al to disable your sigs, enable nested parsing of urls, and change all of your fonts to blue, and this was the result.

12

I sympathize with you. I recently had to pull a Dukes’ entrance into a car, and it wasn’t nearly as fun as those boys make it look. Mine was through a back window of a two-door car, and if my ass was any bigger, I would have been stuck.

13

Mozzerella comes in jars?

14

Doesn’t everyone?

15

I did edit the question out when I realized I had already quoted multiple threads. I thought it didn’t work, so I had only replied to one of the three I quoted. Turned out I had accidently figured it out. Creepy, but not so Inept.:slight_smile:

16

Now I have a response to TheKid whenwever we go to the grocery!
Ma, MORE cheese?
Kid, you’ll be happy to have cheese when our car is possessed a la Christine and my ass is stuck in the window!

17

No, you’re wrong. My 1999 Izuzu Amigo had a strange electrical problem. The Check Engine light would come on and start flashing, my gas gauge would rise until it showed full. I took it took several mechanics who would say that it couldn’t be doing what it was and would put it on the computer which would spit out about 150 things to check.

Since I was told that it would take two weeks and several hundred dollars to check these things out, I told them thanks, but no thanks.

I finally gave it to my brother because he needed a car. He checked it out and replaced an electrical ground. That fixed the problem.

The solution to the OP’s problem is for him/her to give the car to my brother. :wink:

18

Here is a pic of a 2001 Saturn door panel: http://www.bodyshopzone.com/archives/trim/door_panels/Saturn/S_2001/dpgsts06a_saturn_s.jpg Yours is probably similar.
Right above the actual handle is the door lock thing. It rotates around around a pivot, and can absolutely be operated manually.

Edit: Clifford is an alarm company, and that light was part of the alarm system. :slight_smile:

19

Ivylad is bound and determined that his next car is going to be a pre-computer chip car.

20

:smack: Yeah, I hate to break it to you, Sam, but I’ve got (two, technically, but only custody of one) '98 Saturns, and they both have a physical lock on the inside that can be undone even if the alternator’s dead and you have no electricity at all. Ask me how I know.

I feel positively lucky. The only major foible of my gold beauty is that you can’t not set the alarm. Even if you don’t lock the doors when you leave, the alarm sets after some indeterminate and flexible amount of time - could be 20 seconds, could be 3 minutes. This even counts if you get somewhere, turn off the engine and then sit* in* your car (looking for the lost sippy cup, the coupons or just listening to the last of The Wall on the ipod) for a minute. Do you know how embarrassing it is to be at a campground and have your car alarm go off when you get OUT of your car? Kill me now.

On the other hand, I always know exactly how long I’ve been sitting in the waiting room before the mechanic even starts looking at my car. No matter how many times I tell them you *have *to use the clicker, I hear the alarm go off when they open the door to pop the hood! :smiley: