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From the I-love-dealerships department:

So about a week before I left for DARPA my car started to make funny noises. Er, funnier-than-normal noises, that is. It started with a mild clunk whenever I drove over a bump. That turned into a moderate clunk on the bumps accompanied by a squeak in the middle of right-hand turns. Nowadays it’s a kachunk that I can feel through the steering wheel every time I go over the little bump at my driveway, and it squeaks not only in turns but also sometimes when accelerating or decelerating.

My car is not a happy camper.

Now, I don’t think I blogged about it but last July I took my car into the stealerdealership to get a bunch of things fixed: radiator leak, plus ball joint in right front, plus ball bearing in rear left.

(trust me, it all ties in together at the end of the story)

I’m not a huge fan of my dealership. I’ve had a few bad experiences.

The first was when my car got broken into a few years ago. The thieves bent the doorframe back. When it was repaired, the window was tough to open and close. When I asked, I told that’s to be expected. However, it got so tough that eventually some of the gear teeth broke and I couldn’t fully open or close the window anymore. I wrote a complaint letter where I talked about quality service and customer care and such things. In response, they agreed to repair the broken mechanism labour-free but they still charged me for the parts, some $200 or so.

In another case, I went in to fix one problem (I think it was a belt replacement or something like that) and came out with another: the right-front light was loose in its socket. According to the garage the whole unit would have to be replaced at a cost of near $300. Now, maybe that light did manage to get broken at some other time, or maybe it was always broken and I just happened to notice it shortly after their belt replacement. Or maybe they broke it while they were in there fixing other stuff. The belts are on the right side in my front-wheel-drive car, by the way.

(in the end, I decided not to pay $300 to fix a loose headlight fixture)

Now we have this latest case, with the clunks and squeaks. Keep in mind that among other things, earlier these mechanics at the dealership replaced a ball joint at the right-front wheel.

Being fed up with the dealership’s style of service, I decided to try another garage recommended to me by a friend. I dropped my car off early Friday morning and got a call from Dennis, one of the two guys who works at that garage: the bushing is shot in the lower control arm. The lower control arm is part of the ball joint assembly. This whole assembly is replaced at once. The really cool thing about this was that Dennis a) noticed that the parts were relatively new and b) instead of just telling me that I need to replace the ball joint, he c) told me that he noticed the part is relatively new and recommended I contact the people who installed it for a warrantied repair.

So now I have an appointment back at the dealership on Thursday to get the thing replaced under warranty (parts AND labour are both covered under the warranty; I checked). Here’s the thing: maybe the dealership mechanics made a mistake when they installed the part; maybe they broke it on purpose to get themselves some extra business down the road; maybe the part is truly defective. The point is that I want a garage where I can say to myself with certainty, “There’s no way they would’ve done any of those things; it must be a defective part.” I don’t want to feel this uncertainty about my mechanics’ skills or morals.

Naturally I’ll be taking advantage of the warranty repair for the latest issue, but from now on I think I’ll be going to Autotec, the friendly garage. I’m also trying to think of something nice I can do for them, seeing as how Dennis was a) honest with me and b) spent some time on my vehicle to discover the broken part and didn’t get anything back for it. Next time I’m there I’m going to ask him to charge me for whatever time he spent on my car to figure out the ball joint problem. If that doesn’t work, I’m gonna bring them a box of Timmy’s donuts or something.

Anyways, that’s the latest story of my car.

Now onto something else: HOCKEY!

It’s not my buddy Pete’s birthday quite yet, but it’s coming up and his excellent wife managed to get ahold of some tickets to this weekend’s Bruins/Sens game at the Corel Centre for a bunch of us. Good seats. Ground level, row D, where you can see the pain in a Bruins forward as a Sens defenceman takes him to the boards.

It was a great game. The Sens took the Bruins to the cleaners with a 5-1 win. The only disappointment was that because the Sens kicked so much ass in the first two periods, the 3rd wasn’t as suspenseful and action-packed as possible. Heh.

So that was the high point this weekend. Hrm, what else is new? Well, this weekend was really windy (like 45km/h type winds). I haven’t taken the air conditioner out of my bedroom window yet and some of that wind managed to find its way through little cracks around the A/C and so the temperature in my bedroom is hovering around 15-18 °C.

So on my way home today I’ll be stopping by the hardware store to pick up a dolly. See, my air conditioner is somewhat monstrous and there’s no way I’m gonna be able to carry that thing around, and wherever I decide to put it I’ll undoubtedly manage to damage the floor (heh, “manage to damage” … it rhymes … heh) unless I put it on a dolly and roll it into its storage spot.

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