The car story continues...

So i think when we left off in this post'Car fun, car fun, yhea, yhea, yhea...' with "Up next, pick up the Taurus, get the Jetta and hope the Stanza is as good as it feels."

So... Yhea the Stanza is holding up fine the clutch is good and it seems like a nice reliable car again.

The Taurus, yea... well I went to pick it up that night and it still felt like the power steering was out and such. Stupidly i drove it off all the time thinking "nobody is going to buy this car..." i was just getting angry as I went along that I even agreed to take it back. As we got to Main Street in Lansdale the engine light came on and the power started to decrease in the car. I was stopped at a light and again had to make a quick decision about how to handle a dying car while driving it... I started moving forward and the power drained out. I had enough momentum to get around the corner and then I had to open the door and push with one foot... I managed to get it into a side street and parked safely by the curb... Very angry at this point I open the hood and see the serpentine belt sitting in the engine instead of around the pulley things... Sarah is right behind me in the Stanza so we race back to the AAMCO to take care of things. I am done with the Taurus so i get the guy to call a tow truck for it. i also complain a bit and he agrees to do some future work for free. So, we truck back to the Taurus to unload all of our stuff. I try to get the serpentine cable off but the car just wants to keep it. So long taurus. That car was 600 bucks and wasn't not expected to last long but until this day it was pretty much rock solid for the 5 years or so that we had it...

So moving on we get the Jetta. Sarah and get used to the aging clutch and the car is a fun car to drive. Its got the sun roof and the cd player and once you get used to the clutch, it can still get going pretty quickly. Then the engine light started coming on and now a week ago the OIL light started blinking and Buzzing at 2200 RPM. In our fleet of cars we did have a 80 something or 90 jetta that had the same issue. It turned out to be a bad sensor that I was able to replace... I wonder if that is blogged somewhere... I tested out these sensors and could tell if they were bad plus I had put to much oil in and hadn't a chance to drain some of it. Anyway we will be taking that in for the freebie promised by AAMCO. hopefully its not in need of something since our money again is nil.

But what will we do if we have to ground the Jetta? Go back to one car? NO! We have added another car to our fleet. We got a call last week from one of Sarah's friends that her husband was going to give there car away since they were getting another from her Mom... they thought of us first for some reason. So Monday we added a 1996 Plymouth Breeze. Excellent condition with the possibility of a slight oil leak. Its a no frills car but probably the nicest one we have had yet. For now it will sit until we figure out what the Jetta is going to do. Then we may get the Breeze ready to go or see what we can do to just have it with out insurance and registration or something... we will see.

So we end this leg of the story. Jetta going to the shop, Stanza holding steady, and a Breeze in the wings ( Breeze in the wings.... ugh)