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taking care of the cars

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Got the tires rotated, re-balanced and pressure checked on both cars. At no charge. Discount Tires, I do love thee. Today was the first available opportunity to go take care of that.

Next weekend we'll be taking a 3-hour drive to a neighboring city. We try to ensure that the car is ready for such trips.

endorsements:
For engine and tranny and the like: car dealer
For tires: Discount Tires
For brakes and suspension: NTB
For alignment: ?

We used to get our tires and alignment at the same time at NTB. However, NTB alignment numbers and the dealer numbers don't seem to match. I don't know who's right. Now we get the tires from Discount Tires so we've defaulted to the dealer for alignment.

I took my car in for an oil change a few weeks back. I also asked them to check on the rough idling. They said I needed new engine mounts and quoted almost $1K for that. Ouch. I think our neighbor will be able to help with that. He has an engine hoist. He's checking the prices on parts and will get back with us, but for sure it's going to be a few hundred dollars less.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

My "Check Engine" light has been coming on intermittently over the past couple of days. Everything I know how to check (which is, admittedly, not much), seems ok, and the car sounds and runs fine, but still, of course I'm concerned. I'm starting to suspect it has something to do with perhaps transmission fluid, because it only ever comes on after I've shifted into Reverse or Drive.

So now I'm starting to try to hunt for "the best" place to take my car to get it checked out. I'm no longer in the town where I bought my car, so I'd be starting from scratch at a dealership here in GR. And then there's the issue of, are there even any Pontiac dealerships anymore? Am I looking for GM in general? (General Motors in general, heh...)

I also know a small independent garage back in my hometown with a guy you'd trust with your newborn, not to mention your car, and his prices are more than reasonable. I'm sure there must be a place like that around here, but it's not like they're easy to find, ya know?

How is it that the moment I have just a little savings built up, something like this happens?...

Honest, affordable, knowledgable. Ah, the elusive "holy trinity" of car repair! :)