The Great Struggle

Friday afternoon, I skipped out of Calc 3 to head home a measly hour earlier. I wanted to go home to see a couple of friends, and then head back to school on Saturday.

Maybe I was being punished for skipping, I don't know, but on Friday night my car stalled while I was headed down Main Street of good old Rdubbs.

Well, for once I was glad that I was speeding (45/30) so that I could at least coast to a good place where I could pull over. I pulled into the local movie rental parking lot, and attempted to start the SOB.

No good... and then that great smell of something burning.

So I called home and let my mom know what happened and that I was going to leave it there and head to a friend's house. She told my dad about it when he got home from work at 10:30.

Two hours later, I am watching Sex & the City with friends, and my dad calls to tell me that he got the car home with smoke billowing out from under the hood and through the exhaust.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

So after watching S&C, I headed home to sleep, fearing the nightmares of my car on fire and not being insured for a car fire.

Saturday morning I get up and grab an apple and walk outside to see the damage.

There's good old dad--what a grease monkey.

It's seven-thirty in the morning, and he's checking compression for each cylinder... whatever that means, I don't know. "It's a bad fuel-injector, I think," he says.

Well, I guess he was right. So we go junk-yard hopping, hoping, just hoping, that we will find my car in a junk yard.

No such luck. Apparently, the 3.5L engine that Mitsubishi decided to put in my car was not in ANY other model sold in the U.S. Well, looks like we'll have to go to a parts store and see what they can do for us. Keep in mind, I wanted to head back to school today so that I could get some studying in for a couple of tests on Monday.

"We can have it in by next Wednesday," says the grubby-looking man behind the counter, who is, perhaps, much too young for my dad to completely trust when it comes to cars.

"Can you check to see if any of your other stores in the cities have one?" dad says, irritably.

"I did," says the counter guy. Maybe he knows what he's doing after all, I think.

So we mope out of the store, our hope, demolished. Until....

"Dad, let's check a dealership," I propose. So we think of the few-and-far-between Mitsubishi Dealerships in MN. Hmmmmm... Bloomington.

Damn. Their parts department is closed on Saturdays.

So then we call home to have someone look up dealerships.

Brooklyn Center.... what the hell.. let's go.

YAYAYAYAYAYAY!! Parts department open--check. Fuel-injectors in-stock--check!!!!

The guy says, "We go through a lot of these."

Oh great.

"That's $240... how many do you want?"

How many do I WANT!?!?!?! What the hell is wrong with you!? I just want one!!! How many do I want... Jesus.... $240... how many do I want??!

"Just one," says dad as he pulls out the Visa.

Thanks dad.

"We are probably even for that bumper, huh?" He asks, referring to his mishap with my car over the winter.

"Yeah, probably," I say. Four tires, three oil changes, 6 spark plugs, two oil filters, and a fuel-injector later, I guess I can call that even to a $450 piece of plastic.

So we take a quiet ride home... satisfied with our journey of great labor and frustration... but still wondering whether all of this work will fix the problem.

We're home, dad has to work in an hour, but calls in to say he will be late.

Thanks, dad.

So we take out the old injector, put the new one in. We change the spark plugs, change the oil, which was dirtied with gasoline, change the oil filter, and put 'er all back together.

Uh-oh. "Where do these go?" I think to my self while holding two bolts.

"Whew," It's just for the plastic cover that goes over the manifold.

So here's the moment of truth. Let's start 'er up.

*chugga, chugga, chugga, vrooooooooooooooom!!*

So then we watch as blue smoke comes out of every crevice you could possibly think of, and feel slightly nauseous as asphyxiating gases fill the air. The engine rpms slowing down... slight hesitation... it's going to stall, again... but dad knows what to do.

So he stands there under the hood for a couple of minutes, holding the throttle to rev the engine, trying to get it to blow all that shit out.

Then he lets it be.

"It needs to run for at least two hours," he says.

Then he goes and gets his, whatever it's called, code-reading device, and clears all of the codes on the car.

"It's going to need to re-adjust.. all the O2 sensors, the whole works," he gets up and walks over to put things away.

Two hours later, after dad has gone to work, I sit in my car and it's running fine.
No smoke, no weird noises, just perfect.

I've used a quarter of a tank of gas on just 58 miles, but it's okay... filling up at the station is easy... easier than walking back to St. Peter.

This morning, I woke up, took a shower, ate breakfast, and headed back to school. I am very thankful for my dad. I joke sometimes that he could open up his own garage. The funny thing is, he really could do just that.




P.S. Anyone want to buy a car?