It's December - a month that seems to have come much too soon. It's not really cold yet and the time for extreme gift giving will surely depress me to the point of tears at least once. Not that I don't want to give much, but I really can't this year. For one, I have a new car that I surely couldn't afford. It didn't come to me in the best of ways, either. Let me record the whole story here, at least for something to come back to when I'm old and doddery.
It was going to be something easy. Something relatively quick which, in terms of my car, would be done in time to be driven again by Monday morning for the long trek to work...but it wasn't. Of course it wasn't or I wouldn't be relating this story at all, let alone whinging on about it in my blog. For some time now, I knew that I had to order a new harmonic balancer for my car. Apparently it is part of the crankshaft assembly and my mechanic boyfriend told me that the one I had now was wobbling and, if I didn't get it taken care of, it would come off and - in a worst-case scenario - take out part of my engine whilst driving. Not good. So, when it came time for him to do my oil change and whatnot, I ordered the part off an auto parts website (the only one left with the available part, so we really had no choice where to buy it from) and he did the oil change before starting on the balancer.
Needless to say, my car would not start when he put the new balancer on. He figured out that it was one or two things: either the part was bad and/or the sensor was bad. Oh...and that didn't take too long...it is just that my car's under-hood area is heavily encrusted with years of gunk and all original parts from 1989-1990. Suffice to say that he had a terrible time of even the slightest of things which is, unfortunately, usually the case with my older car. Sunday, he went and bought a new sensor at NAPA and put it on with the old balancer; the car started right up. I was elated because I was seriously looking into rental cars and bus schedules. He told me that he didn't want to risk putting the new part on again with the new sensor because he thinks the new part busted the old sensor because the spacing on some part of it was off. Soo...to make a long story slightly shorter, we decided it was finally time to get into gear to get me a new car.
Over the course of last weekend, we drove all over the place and looked at a few cars in "my" price range. (Note, I put "my" in quotation marks because I have no money at all. My wonderful boyfriend is paying for the car outright and I will pay him back. I feel extremely awkward about this, but there is no way around it because everyone, including him, do not want me to pay all the interest and fees and full coverage on insurance to make payments on a car from a dealership. Oh, and "my" price range started out at around $0 - $2000 and eventually went up to...well, you'll see.) They were awful.Too expensive for a 1998 Ford Escort with 80K miles...2001 Neon whose engine was the loudest I'd ever heard in such a small car...2000 Mercury Sable which felt like getting into a newer version of my rather large Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera...it was taxing on everyone looking.
At the end of the day last Saturday, I accompanied my parents to Best Buy to help them get a camera while boyfriend went home to look at more cars on Craigslist. When we got home, he'd found a 2004 Kia Rio with a little over 68K miles in our area. We were pretty much sold on it before we went there, which was bad. It was the model car I wanted with low mileage without having to drive a billion miles to see it. Worst part so far was the price - the guy was asking online for $3950. Ryan figured he could talk him down some, so we went to see it.
The car was cute and rode well, but Ryan immediately saw that it had an oil leak (although the guy said he'd just sprayed down under the hood for looks and that was probably it) and it needed tires on the back. Driving it was nice, but it whined a little. We looked at eachother and wanted all this crap over with, so we took it. Had to put a deposit down because his bank wouldn't give him any more cash at the ATM for the day, so we got it and the title Monday night after work.
It's now Friday and we know that the belts are too tight, the AC was just charged and it's probably a head gasket that's leaking - not the valve cover like we were hoping. Oh...and we got the car for $3700, which is really more than we wanted to pay, but we were over it. So...I have a Kia Rio...which is what I wanted since it's cute, newer than my car and has low mileage. However, I still can't drive it yet. We have 58 days (the leftover length of two temporary tags for my Olds) to fix it. Too bad Ryan has to use his vacation week in two weeks to do it. Oh well...at least he won't feel like he did nothing all day during his "stay-cation" like he did last time.
New lesson learned!
When buying a used car, take your time! Don't try to rush it or you'll be in worse shape than when you started!
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