I finally managed to get insured and have the work that needed done on my vw bug finished.... it was a long wait but soooo worth it... I'm in love again! I forgot how much i love to shift gears and have the windows down, and just go drive...
The weekend started out great, Kindel's mom insured the car (it was suprisingly cheap compared to the jeeps full coverage), and my dad left me great easy directions to throw the rebuilt carburetor on it and how to adjust the idle. All I had left to do was go and get my new tires...
I was so excited, finally I get to drive my bug :)
As we all know, nothing ever seems to come so easily... We left my parents house on Sunday, to go the 3-4 hour drive to our new place with the bug and the jeep. I got into the city and decided to take all the side streets and not the freeway because I'm not sure how fast the bug can go these days and the freeway has been all under construction and crap. I made it to old route 66... almost. Then as luck would have it, there is this totally crappy noise and I'm just like whoa! what the hell is that???
Being the daughter of a mechanic I thought, ok... i will pull over at the next gas station... as the noise got louder, I began to wonder when the station would appear, and finally decided I must pull over without a gas station. Knowing full-well that Jasper and Dusty would be restless if we had to wait to fix it tow it or whatever, I was hoping it was a simple fix. It wasn't though... I checked out the obvious things, like the new tires and then kindel (who was following me) said well that tire looked kinda wobbly... and of coarse it was. (see i have a smart man) I take off my hubcap (that i badly ruined in the process as i didn't have a screwdriver to remove it), and much to my surprise into my hand falls two lug-bolts. Lovely. Just freaking beautiful. I'm like oh..... I have been here before.... back in 94 in the damn yugo. So I look at my rim and see that the holes for the bolts are totally ruined, the lug-bolts are ruined and i probably screwed up the brake drum as well. So much for the great drive home.
We call aaa, thinking oh we can wait 20 minutes for a tow truck and be on our way. Again our luck is lousy, so we wait 4 hours with the two boys for the tow truck... I should have just had kind take the boys and go home (duh?). Apparently because we actually told the AAA peeps what happened to the car they had to find us a rollback and a driver willing to leave the county on a Sunday. Finally our rollback and redneck arrive. He seems nice enough, I'm like hey my kids are starving, mind if we stop somewhere before we go far. hes like sure. of coarse there is actually no where to stop so we stop at a gas station and buy crappy chips and sodas (my kids don't get to eat that crap ever). We drive and drive and then we see our favorite bbq place and at this point kind is griping about hungry the kids have to use the bathroom and are hungry too so i tell AAA guy hey I can buy ya lunch or we can just catch up and you can use the GPS to find our house. He decided no lunch, and then proceeds to get lost (thank god we didn't have to pay for miles). We go and find him and since he went down the wrong dirt road we have to back up about 2 miles before we can turn around. Finally home.
I did call the tire shop this morning and they are all about "making it right"... but what does that include? I would have thought it to include our tow bill, the rim, the lug bolts, the brake drum, maybe a car rental till its fixed,and something for my hassle and crappy day :( since it was all because some young tech couldn't bother to tighten my lug bolts! At this point i think they will cover the brake drum, labor to install it, new rim, new bolts, new hubcap (even though that was my bad) and that is it. I am a bit irritated that they wont pay the tow bill (because AAA covered it) and now i wont have a tow to use when i need my AAA. I think i will send them a copy of the damn bill anyhow.
I'm super thankful that I stopped the car before the wheel entirely fell off (as it did when we unloaded the bug from the tow truck), and that we are okay. It would have made our crappy day worse if anything happened to my boy and I. It's still a bummer that now i cant drive until its fixed (which i don't have money for and i have to pay for it all in advance, and then be reimbursed for it). At least I know that my bug is still cute and the idle is set right :) and that eventually I can drive it and know that there won't be another mishap like this. I suppose this is why my dad always told me to work on my own car if i could manage to do it right...
On the plus side, my neighbor guy mechanic friend is gonna fix the linkage so it shifts better this next weekend :) then i can drive and downshift (the only other quirk with my new car).
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