She’s an older lady so she has a tendency to burn oil. On Sunday I was giving her a quart when my friend decided to be helpful. After I put the oil cap back on, I went to the trunk to put the leftover oil and my funnel back, and she decided to go ahead and shut my hood.
“Ouch!” said my car.
Turns out my friend put the hood prop back in the wrong place.
So instead of putting it in the pretty little prop nook, she put it behind my headlight, which as you can see from the sad car photograph above, is a pop-up headlight (so retro, I know). So the prop gets jammed behind my headlight so it will no longer go up or down and I cannot shut my hood. I tried to get the beotch out of there, but it’s wedged behind a screw that I cannot remove.
Shit.
So I called Honda yesterday because they very conveniently have a service department right by my apartment, and we set an appointment for 3:30 today to get the prop out.
WELL. My little car was pissed off and decided to have a dead battery this morning! Oh hip hip hooray!
I figure that it’s dead because my car thinks the headlight is up so it’s drained the battery. Of course at 8am, I don’t have anyone around to give me a jump so I hopped on the bus to work.
At lunch, my coworker takes me home to give me a jump. She didn’t know anything about jumping a car, so much to my dismay she was not aware that her battery is in the trunk of her car, latched down by big serious bolts that are impossible to get out (&@*$ Volvo). By now I’m really annoyed because if I don’t get my car started, I can’t get it to Honda, they can’t fix it, and I can’t get to school tomorrow.
So I suck it up and call my boss and she comes to my rescue. She didn’t know anything about jumping cars, either (what's the deal there? I thought everyone knew how), so they both stood around watching me (which lemme tell you is interesting when you can’t prop your hood up because your prop is stuck in your headlight). I hook up the cables [that spark that happens when you connect the negative clamp to the engine was funny—they both started freaking out], and let the good battery charge mine up for about 20 minutes. I let out a little “yippee” when she started, and I got her to Honda without a problem.
Imagine my surprise at the bizarre coincidence when they tell me the dead battery and the headlight problem were not related! I just had a bad battery whose time had run out. I was a little skeptical at first, but seeing that it is a licensed Honda shop, they can’t screw me over, and he explained that they ran all the necessary diagnostic tests to make sure. So I was a little miffed at having to buy a new car battery, but I lucked out because the prop didn’t damage my headlight motor.
So all in all, it’s a satisfying result.
But that doesn’t mean I won’t be breakin out the wine tonight.
4 comments:
I hate car troubles. There is probably nothing worse. In the world.
I agree with madge.
How can people NOT know how to jump a car? Seriously.
No, I can't say I know how to jump a car either. But then again I don't have one.
Yes, this was definitely a "break out the booze" day.
I learned something new. I learned that Volvo's have their batteries in the trunk. Good to know.
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