After months of being slightly irritated by the chronic under-inflation of the left-front tire of my car, I finally brought the car to Klein to let him have a look at it. There wasn’t any nail lodged in the tire but it looked like there may be two tiny leaks. He patched up the areas of possible-leak, changed the stem, told me to wait several days and hope that the repair would fix the problem, and charged me $21.20. If after several days, the tire started going down again, I would have to get a new tire.

VW for some crazy reason(s) used an odd-size tire (215/50R15) for my old-ish and rare (aka unpopular) 1997 VW Passat, and due to the car’s lack of status, tire manufacturers actually stopped producing this particular size! Auto-parts places would have to search warehouses for leftovers of this special tire. With all these factors combined, the new tire would cost $103.50, instead of $50-60 for a regular tire. Hmmm, it doesn’t pay to be special…

While watching Klein work on removing the tire from the rim, I had an enlightening moment which highlighted my auto-ignorance (Ah-ha-Duh moment):

“What?? There’s no inner tube?!!”

For the past eight months, the dashboard “check engine” light has been on. When I first got the car, the mechanic said that it was due to a faulty O2 sensor but it was not a big deal, so I could basically just ignore that light. Last weekend, I was talking to my dad about my car issues and he recommended that I spray some WD-40 into the ignition keyhole. So on Monday, that’s what I did. And when I was driving on Tuesday, the most amazing thing happened - the “check engine” light was off and it has been off since then. My dad calls the WD-40, the car version of the human cure-all “foong yau” (Kwan Loong oil).

This afternoon, the outside temperature went up to 24C, I wonder if WD-40 can stop the power steering rack from leaking

I just brought my car for its second oil-change. I can’t believe I had the car for over 8 months now. Like all “old” or just older cars, the car has several chronic issues that I should deal with, but as a financially-challenged student, I will just live with it and hope that these chronic issues do not become acute ones. And I do hope that warmer weather ahead will solve some of these issues, unfortunately, with the warm weather another major chronic issue will return. Here are my car issues:

Power steering fluid leakage:
Since the end of October last year, I haven’t had to top-up the power steering fluid at all. Somehow, the cold shrunk the leak-site, which is very good news for me because I don’t have to crank open the hood every other day to refill the power steering fluid tank. But I predict by April I’ll have the same old problem again. I plan to get this fixed but it will cost at least $360…sigh.

Stalling:
For some unknown reason, the car will occasionally stall when it has been idling at a red-light for some time. This has happened three times now. Even though, I can immediately restart it again, I’ve been conditioned to become slightly anxious every time I’m at a red-light now. I did ask the mechanic about it and he said that it could be due to a loose ignition connection. But when I asked, “Why then would it only happen when the car is not moving, wouldn’t the loose ignition issue occur when the car is moving too?” He laughed and said good point. Since I cannot afford to have him look into this issue, we let it go.

Electrical shut-off:
I think this issue is closely related to the stalling issue. Several times when I’ve parked and as I’m removing the key from the ignition, somehow an electrical shut-off occur - the clock & several dashboard-meters get reset. And the alarm also gets reset and forgets that I’m in the car, and when I open the door to get out, the alarm will go off. The alarm thinks that someone is trying to get in the car without the key. I’ll have to quickly close the door and use the key to lock and unlock the door, and then the alarm will stop. So far, I think this has happened about ten times now. I don’t even bother to set the clock anymore. I’ve been doing a search online on both stalling and electrical shut-off issues, and some probable problematic areas that I found were the air-filter, spark plugs, and ignition coil. But I’m trying to find a cost-free resolution. The last two days, I’ve tried to apply pressure on the key when I’m turning off the ignition (if it’s the loose ignition connection problem), so far this issue has not occured. I guess I’ll continue to do this until the car proves that this tactic doesn’t work.

Faulty A/C:
Well, it’s cold now so this is not a problem but I do remember the drive in 35C heat last summer. But I’m not sure if I can afford to fix this problem. I guess it’s another issue that I’ll have to live with.

Faulty cruise-control:
I found out that this was faulty during the drive to Newark last year. But then, I seldom drive long distance, so it’s a non-issue.

But, hey, the car has a moon-roof and an 8-disc CD player with a good sound system! And overall it has been a very good car for its $2000 price-tag. So, I’m not complaining.

Trapped

I was so busy the last few days with draft/revisions - the last thing on my mind was to get the car out of the snow. So I put the chore aside and the snow-plough truck left a mountain of snow behind the car. After a few days, the snow became heavy compacted snow-ice. This afternoon I spent an hour digging the car out. After today’s experience, next time I’ll do the digging immediately, when the snow is still light and fluffy. I’m going to have two very sore arms tomorrow.

The temperature is slowly dropping outside and my room is now constantly at 18C or lower. And because heat costs money, I’m holding off turning on the heater till sometime in November and even then it’ll be set at the lowest setting. So from now till April, I’ll be suffering from a condition called chronic CHF (cold hands and feet), but I do get some temporary relief when I’m in my office, where it’s toasty and warm.

On Monday, I sent the Passat to Klein’s auto polyclinic (everything-also-can-fix garage). I’m back to the good old car-less days…till Thursday when I’ll be $200 poorer It’s either that or keep getting in the car through the passenger side and climbing over to the driver seat. Oh well…

I’ve decided that 15C temperature is the best temperature to run in. Yesterday, I got home early and went out for a run. This time I ran 10 mins, walked 1 min and repeated that 4 times. I’m amazed I could do that. Once upon a time, I couldn’t even run continuously for two minutes. Jingle Bell Run, here I come!

Moonroof

1. It has a moonroof!
2. I’ve spent $228 in gas, since I got the car at the end of June, 2006
3. I’ve spent $18 in power steering fluid
4. It has leaked 1 gallon (3.79L) of power steering fluid
5. The two front seats have heat controllers
6. I’ve driven 1600miles (2575km) in it
7. I’ve not washed the car once
8. I’ve vacuumed the interior once
9. The check engine light is always on…hahaha
10. In the trunk, there is a bottle of coolant (left by previous owner), 2 bottles of power steering fluid, a small bottle of WD40, a small tube of super glue, a roll of of blue fabric/paper towel-like material (supposedly to be used to wipe auto stuff etc), a tire pressure gage-thing, a snow/ice scraper-brush, a car-door handle, and a bicycle pump.

VW Passat

The COE librarian invited me over to her place this evening for a casual supper to welcome three Fulbrighters to Lehigh, and it was so nice to answer her email by saying I’d love to come and have no “but I’ll need a ride.” The other day, I drove to the small group meeting and once again it was great not needing a ride. And now I’m even picking up another student to church and then to grocery shopping after that.

Today I went to Klein’s garage and have them take a look at the faulty driver’s side power window and door. I was adviced to not turn down the window and because the door refuses to open from the outside when the window is closed, so in order to open the driver’s door, I have to go in via the back door, stretch out to the front door handle, pull it open, and with one hand making sure the front door doesn’t close, get out from the backdoor still making sure the front door doesnt close, go around the back door then close the back door and get in the front door. Or I could actually get in front the front passenger side and climb over to the driver’s side, maybe I should try that tomorrow. I have an appointment to drop off my car next Monday for them to take it apart and fix the problem and I have no idea how much that would cost me. And I have yet to get the power steering rack fixed but since the temperature is dropping, the power steering fluid isn’t leaking as much. But I do feel bad polluting the environment (or Duh’s parking lot) with power steering fluid.

Anyway, the dinner party was to welcome three Fulbright scholarship holders to Lehigh’s college of education. One of them is from Singapore, another from Maldives but actually went to Inti College in Subang, and the third is from Mali and tells me there are a lot of Malaysians in the construction arena in Mali. It’s a small world after all.

VW Passat

Tomorrow, this car will be mine. There’s still some fixing and inspection to be done before I can drive it with a peace of mind. Although I got it at a great price from a graduating student…I know with this car, financially, things will never be the same again. But I won’t have to run my life by the Lanta Metro and Lehigh bus schedule. Today I had to cancel a therapy appointment because the 8.40am bus from Duh broke down and I couldn’t make it to the Metro bus-stop on time to catch the 9am bus, and thus missed the 10am appointment.

Well, I’ll take more pictures of the car when is finally mine.