The other night I was talking with Craig, my father-in-law, about cars and other things. Of course I had to tell him how pleased we are with how reliable our cars have been over the past little while. They're old, beat up, and are definitely too small for our rapidly growing family, but nothing has gone wrong with either of them since we've had them and we enjoy not having car payments.
You can see where this is going, I'm sure, but the next day I went to start Jet, our black and green jetta, after a couple of days of sitting out in the 20 degree (F) weather. Wouldn't you know, I turned the key and got a wha wha wha wha click. Then nothing. I tried to start it again and nothing. Great! Now we are a thousand miles from home with 4 non-holiday days left before it's time to head home and we have a car that won't start.
We hooked up jumper cables to the car to rule out a dead battery and, as I suspected, nothing changed. Now the likely culprit was a dead starter. I was going to take it to a mechanic after a rolling start, but wouldn't you know, the streets were covered with snow which makes a rolling start impossible. In the face of a towing charge on top of the work to get the starter replaced, I started thinking along the lines of a DIY job.
After working to get the dead car back up the hill (failed roll start), onto the driveway, and uphill into the garage (we used an Egyptian-style rope method to do this, that part was interesting), I set to work on changing the starter.
Here I am rocking the awesome set of coveralls my dad brought over for me -- he also tracked down a huge propane heater from the best veterinarian in town and brought over all my old car equipment to use. The Army boots and PT hat were my own touch.
In action:
The job was completed the next day and now it starts like a new car. The best part is that my worries about owning a diesel in cold weather have completely subsided -- it starts better than most gas cars, even in super cold weather!
We're hoping it holds up to the long trip home. I obviously have not learned to keep my mouth shut about the car as I'm blogging about how well it's running again.....
