FROMONLINE | 2013-07-07

  • By Tami Lange
  • July 7, 2013
  • 374
                        
HED: When it comes to cars, it pays to know what can go wrong SUMMARY: In a lifetime of driving, every pop and flash signals a rough road ahead. I am an inadvertent gearhead. It’s not that I want to know much about cars. I don’t read “Car & Driver.” I don’t go visit the Cleveland Auto Show. I am not even really sure how the internal combustion engine works, although it was part of Nipper’s sixth-grade science curriculum. Specific types of tires and engines mean absolutely nothing to me. But when it comes to cars – I know exactly what makes them stop running. I know this because I’ve had any number of cars in the last 30 years and all of them – at some point – have stopped running. I got off to a bad start. My folks ponied up $500 for a white Dodge Dart with a roof that looked like a cobra had collided with Contac paper. I was driving it from North Lawrence to college in Westerville when it started making a weird, squeally sound. By Mount Vernon, the sound could no longer be blocked by turning the AM radio up any louder. I rolled it into a service station. The next words I heard: “cracked block.” Thus came the premature end of car number 1. And ever since then, I have learned what every bump, squeal and pop signals. I’ve also learned that those lights on the dashboard are not to be ignored. Prior to marriage, I had no specific “type” when it came to automobiles. If it was cheap, had decent tires and was less than 20 years old, I drove it. And thus I learned what problems were most likely to affect what makes and models. I made outrageous mistakes along the way. For a time, I drove a bright red, 1971 VW Beetle, which I loved like a child – even though it took me two weeks to figure out how to put it reverse. One day, as I left a local store parking lot, I noticed the familiar greenish-blue puddle of antifreeze where the front of car had been parked. Later, while reading through police reports, I told a few of the Wooster officers what had happened. Barely disguising his glee, one officer pointed out that 1. My engine was in the back of the car and 2. This car did not have a radiator. Color me embarrassed, especially when the same officer pointed out that what I called the “really cool engine sound” was actually my muffler, which was 95 percent disconnected from the rest of the car. The happy ending is that I happily drove that car for a number of years, on highways and back roads, listening to the AM radio and loving every minute of it. Then came the day when the car stopped – literally – on an exit off I-90. It was yet another small switch, but it scared me back into cars built within 15 years of purchase. I lost headlights, taillights, various pieces of undercarriage. I’ve seen realignments, turned crankshafts and bad head gaskets. My tires have been flattened, my power steering has failed. One time, I lost a windshield wiper that cracked loudly as it flew off in a rainstorm on Beall Avenue. Hearing the crack, I ducked – thinking it might be sniper fire. My favorite car was a little Geo Metro wagon – the kind that you had to lean forward in when going up a hill. Nothing ever went wrong with it – until a mid-1980s Olds 88 pulled out in front of it and sheared off the front end. I consider all of my automotive mishaps to be learning experiences, which brings me to an incident a few weeks back: I was driving through Wooster when my battery light came on. A few hours later, during a downpour, I got into the car outside Kohl’s, turned the key and found every single light on my dash flashing on and off. The radio lights flashed; the clock flashed. Knowing exactly the problem, I turned off all non-essential accessories and drove home, telling Husband that I needed a new alternator. He gave me that look, that you’re-a-woman-what-do-you-know-about-cars-didn’t-you-think-that-Beetle-had-a-radiator look, and suggested a few other things that most likely were causing the problem. He’d take it to the garage the next day, he said. “I’d have it towed,” I said. “Because the alternator is about shot.” No matter. The next day, Husband called me at work. He was in my now-not-running car in a shopping center parking lot, waiting for a tow. I said nothing. A day or so later, the car had been restored to working order. Husband gave me the total amount to record in the check register. “What was wrong?” I asked as he walked away. Silence … then muttering. “What?” I said. “Alternator,” he said. Henry Ford would be so proud of me.


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